ROCKLEDGE, FL — July 14th, 2017 — Mainstream Engineering Corporation, a 31-year-old Brevard County research and manufacturing company has been awarded a contract from the Army for development of a sanitation system for expeditionary field feeding referred to as the Mobile and Efficient Sanitation System (MESS).
Mainstream’s engineers will develop and demonstrate the highly expeditionary three sink sanitation system to achieve low volume during transportation. Furthermore, the company will investigate novel methods to achieve increased fuel efficiency, lower weight, and a rugged design tailored to military applications.
Army mobile kitchens require a method to wash, rinse, and sanitize kitchen wares in order to conduct field feeding operations. The Army currently fields the Food Sanitation Center (FSC) to provide this capability, which is equipped with a three sink system heated by three burners using an open-combustion heat-exchange concept that is noisy, inefficient, and bulky.
Mainstream’s MESS system will consist of three separate sinks with an improved thermal design to reduce the amount of fuel needed to provide hot water for the sinks. The MESS system also features a unique packaging concept to reduce the “pack out” volume during transport. This new sanitation system stands to greatly benefit the Army’s expeditionary field sanitation capabilities, as well as reduce fuel usage, cost, and logistics burden. If successful, the technology could expand to commercial and industrial food service in remote settings, off-grid communities, and disaster relief applications.
About Mainstream Engineering Corporation
Mainstream Engineering Corporation is a solutions-oriented research, development and manufacturing small business with a history of leading-edge R&D that has resulted in advanced, American-made, cost-competitive products. Founded in 1986, Mainstream’s mission is to transition thermal control, energy storage and energy conversion technology into high-quality, cost-effective, environmentally safe green, commercial products. Products include lightweight diesel engines, thermal control units, biomass conversion technologies, refrigerators/freezers for shipping containers and the QwikProduct™ line of heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration (HVAC/R) products. Areas of research include thermal control, energy conversion, power electronics, turbomachinery, chemical technology and materials science.