New tech combats drought

By Brandi Walker | Published 02/04/15 6:30am

Hexocover, a new technology supported by Tech Launch Arizona, was designed to prevent the evaporation of water and use solar power to generate energy.

Robert Sleeper, the UA College of Engineering licensing manager with Tech Launch Arizona, said he licensed the Hexocover to the company RePower Design, which is run by Nathan Barba, a co-inventor.

Hexocover is made up of 4-inch plastic balls that are sandwiched between two pieces of plastic, said Nathan Barba, managing partner of RePower Design and an Arizona State University student.

These modules are connected and topped with hexagonal shapes that are used on solar panels.

The Hexocover technology is easy to install and can be deployed to cover any open body of water where its important to save water from evaporation, said Moe Momayez, co-inventor of Hexocover and associate professor in the department of mining and geological engineering.

The best environment to deploy this would be in Southwest U.S. or anywhere else where you have a semi-arid climate with a lot of evaporation, Momayez said. The evaporation rate in Arizona is in excess of 100 to 105 inches per each year.

The Hexocover is a very cost effective method of stopping evaporation, Barba said. He and Momayez agreed that there was a need to prevent water evaporation due to climate change and significant drought in places such as California and Texas.

If we could make a dent in some of the water loss some of the cities and municipalities are dealing with, we think that could make a huge impact, Barba said.

Momayez added that they experimented with this design for almost 18 months, and the results have been promising.

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New tech combats drought