Issued: (Utility) Pressurized Vapor Cycle Liquid Distillation
The customer was working on a means to purify water in 3rd world countries. The system architecture that was chosen was one adapted by commercial and military ships worldwide. Vapor compression distillation is a means where pure water is created by distilling steam. A variant of this process is the vapor compression desalination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vapor-compression_desalination
The technology is explained here: [link needed] We were retained to help with the compression portion of the system and with the development of a counterflow liquid/liquid 3 channel parallel plate heat exchanger.
Read more about the laudable goal of the project here: http://www.popsci.com/article/science/pure-genius-how-dean-kamens-invention-could-bring-clean-water-millions or click on the link to see what was patented.