New year, new location for Harmony. At the beginning of the month we packed up our tools and equipment and moved into a warehouse at Fitzgerald Shipyard, which will be our base for the next several months as we put together at least five skids for our upcoming pilot testing.

The Winnisimmet Ferry kicked off the maritime operations here just shy of 400 years ago and the shipyard is unique in the Boston Harbor in its capacity (60’ wide marine railway for vessels of up to 1600 tons). Reach out if you’d like to visit! We should have a pilot operational here after February 5.

For Harmony, the Shipyard is an affordable spot with the ample space and power to build and test our pilot skids, including our first containerized systems which will ship to Socorro, TX. It’s not pretty: the roof leaks and there is no heat. But we’re glad to be here. Our only other option was a smaller space at The Engine. We’re still keeping a studio at Artisans Asylum for machining and meetings, and may join Greentown Labs in the near future.

New inbound lead
A company in the energy space (an existing contact) reached out for help to produce potable water for their Special Operations Command (SOCOM) project later this year. In expeditionary applications, the name of the game is minimal space, weight, and energy. The current state-of-the-art are Aspen’s Watermakers. Their systems spec out at a specific energy consumption (SEC) of 5 kWh per m3 of fresh water. We should be able to halve that in a similar form factor. This project is not definite yet, but we’ll be ready in case they call on us.

January progress
In mid-January I attended an Enterprise B2B Sales Bootcamp, a helpful MIT Venture Mentoring Service (VMS) event given our need to transition from the R&D phase to commercial operations. Haig signed up for this same event in 2024 but it was cancelled due to a double-booking.

Last Tuesday Haig and I flew to Midland, TX on our way to Lubbock to attend the Texas Water College before driving down to Socorro for more pilot preparations. We also toured a combination pistachio farm/vineyard before heading back to Boston and attending the New England Water and Environment Association (NEWEA) Annual conference yesterday.

Just this afternoon I gave an interview with Irrigation Leader Magazine. They discovered us via the November article in Knowable Magazine, which has been cross-posted to various publications. They are planning a desalination-focused issue for May of this year.

The months ahead
Right now we are hard at work putting together our first of five skids. We shipped our old prototype (el Titan) from Texas back up to Massachusetts and tore it apart. We’re now putting it back together again as an extra iteration (valuable experience for Jenny and Quinton) ahead of building our sponsored pilots.

The general plan (subject to change) is as follows:

• February: commissioning of our internal pilot, el Titan v3. We are getting some good mileage out of this equipment. One of the pumps actually dates back to our bench-scale prototype at MIT.

• March: commissioning of our NAWI pilot (a retrofit) at Colorado School of Mines and of our first seawater RO skid (Searay), which will ship to Singapore and eventually Saudi Arabia.

• April-May: commissioning of our two BoR pilots: 1) our first containerized system which will desalt well-water for agriculture in Socorro, TX and 2) a pair of skids which will treat produced water in Ventura, CA in partnership with Active Membranes.

Our 2025 goal
As I mentioned last week, we are pretty busy for the first half of the year designing, building, and commissioning several pilots. Beyond these pilots, we do not currently have any projects on the docket. That brings us to our 2025 goal: making our first commercial sale.

The first commercial sale could come in the form of a sale or a paid pilot. Up to now all of our pilots have been funded by government grants or sponsored contests and nearly all of the clean water we’ve made has gone down the drain. We’ve got to change that and actually put this water to good use.

So the name of the game is executing on our remaining pilots so that we can sell our first desalters.

regards-
quantum