BOSTON, February 26, 2009 — Skyhaven Systems, LLC (RIL) received a multi-year contract from the EPA to develop a line of inexpensive water disinfection systems. Over 250 drinking water systems exist for small communities in Puerto Rico that serve 25-500 individuals. These water systems fall outside of the Puerto Rico Aquaduct and Sewer Authority and, thus, have no or insufficient water treatment systems. Water sources for these communities are from ground and surface water with flow rates up to 50,000 gallons per day for a community of 500 people. To improve upon this water treatment process, the EPA desires improved novel filtration and chlorination methods that can disinfect and filter these drinking water sources. To address this need, Skyhaven Systems, LLC previously showed the EPA its on-site hypochlorite generator that continuously chlorinates surface groundwater. During this effort, RIL showed that its electrochemical reactor technology can produce hypochlorite for varying water flow rates upwards to 50,000 gallons per day and at required disinfection levels up to 5 ppm of equivalent chlorine. The major focus of RIL’s water chlorination unit is to minimize its initial and operating costs, thus, the system has few components other than the hypochlorite reactor, a tank of salt, and a power supply. All of the process water flows through the electrochemical reactor to produce bleach in situ with the flowing water stream and, thus, eliminates slip stream pumps and control systems. The improved design of RIL’s electrochemical reactor will help lower the system cost, one of the major drivers for deploying a water disinfection system into the marketplace. For the present contract, RIL will scale the hypochlorite generator to larger process flow rates, continue minimizing the system complexity and cost, and develop operational hypochlorite generation systems that can operate unattended for one-year at process rates of 50,000 gallons per day. This technology is being commercialized in concert with water equipment manufacturers and water system providers. Furthermore, the water disinfection system will undergo a verification process conducted via a third-party organization through the EPA’s Environmental Technology Verification program.

The immediate application of RIL’s electrochemical reactor technology is toward an improved chlorination process for small communities in Puerto Rico. The modular design of the reactor technology will allow RIL to scale it to medium and large water disinfection systems as well as scale it to produce higher levels of sodium hypochlorite for wastewater cleanup.