Earlier this month, I met with Cordellia Sita of the MIT Technology Licensing Office (TLO). Our exclusive option is due to expire soon, so we are requesting a second extension.

The exclusive option agreement gives Harmony the sole ability to negotiate with the TLO for a commercial license of the batch RO IP. Obtaining a commercial license is a necessary step before we are able to sell any batch desalination systems; our exclusive option only allows for research use.

Cordellia was happy with our piloting progress, particularly the Singapore PUB demonstration and off-grid BoR pilot. However, she and the TLO would prefer to see more substantial capital behind Harmony so they are assured we can successfully commercialize the technology.

Thus far, we have raised $220,000 via SAFEs. I am now redirecting my focus to fundraising with the aim of closing a priced round in CY2025. If you know of any investors who would be a good fit for Harmony, now is the time to connect us. Otherwise, you may no longer be receiving these updates from me a year from now.

What we’ve been up to

• Texas Water Development Grant: as I mentioned last month, Plum Creek Conservation District committed to a $200,000 cost share for a grant submission to the TWDB. We put together most of the grant and PCCD submitted it earlier this month. This was truly a team effort with contributions from Haig, Jenny, Christine, and myself. Pretty quick turnaround — we should find out by July. You can read the proposal here.

  • There are longstanding funds available from both state (TWDB) and federal (BoR) agencies to subsidize local water infrastructure. This partnership demonstrates a working model for funding future desalination systems which would be assembled, commissioned, and serviced by Harmony.

• XPRIZE registration: the Water Scarcity XPRIZE is “a $119 million, 5-year global competition designed to drive widespread access to clean water by creating reliable, sustainable, and affordable seawater desalination systems.” We just completed registration and plan to submit a brief with results from our first seawater desalination tests by the end of April. The team is named Renaissance Water. Unlike many of the other corporate teams, we plan for our team act as an umbrella team, uniting the best-in-class solutions for each part of a desalination plant.

• Colorado visit: Quinton, Martin, and I flew to Denver, Colorado this past Wednesday to help out with shakedown of Chimaera, a pilot funded by the National Alliance for Water Innovation. This pilot is important because it demonstrates the ability retrofit conventional RO systems to operate a batch process. It also represents a big step for scale-up. This pilot is the first time we will be operating two bladder pressure vessels in parallel and also features our longest ever (4 meters) bladders.

  • We call this system Chimaera because it is a hybrid system able to operate five (!) different RO processes: our single-acting bladder batch process, a double-acting piston batch process, semi-batch RO, pulse-flow RO, and conventional RO.

  

What’s up next

• Searay commissioning: we were prepared to commission our first seawater desalination system the first week of April, but this is being pushed back a couple of weeks because our automation engineer was called to Australia on short notice. This gives us more breathing room to put the finishing touches on Searay and put our best foot forward for a system which will be shown to potential customers in both Singapore and Saudi Arabia.

• Chimaera commissioning: once the Mines/Purdue teams have had a couple of weeks to test the system in conventional and semi-batch mode, they will move on to implementing our batch bladder process. Some of our team will certainly be onsite to help out with this commissioning.

• European Desalination Society conference: Christine and I will travel to Porto, Portugal to present on our 2025 batch pilots. In particular, we plan to highlight the BoR-funded agricultural pilot and the PUB-funded seawater pilot.

In March, we also converted a 1099 contractor to a W2 hire. Please welcome Martin Colwell to the team, bringing us to six strong. Martin has helped us with machining in the past. He is a sharp mechanical engineer and avid ice climber.

regards-
quantum