Saturday, June 6, 2015

Air-Water Nozzle Prototype 1.0

 
It's been six weeks since we started using compressed air to "pre-rinse" dishes at Post Ranch.  A lot has happened since then!  Here are some updates:

·        Since putting the air system into place we wend from using 3,000 gallons per day in the restaurant down to 2,000 on a consistent basis.
 
·         In California there are over 60,000 full service restaurants and 25,000 quick service restaurants. In addition, there are over 10,000 schools, 20,00 hotels and numerous corporate office buildings. All of these use a similar dish washing system.

·         On the conservative side- if we estimate that there are 100,000 pre-rinse nozzles in California and that on average each could save 800 gallons per day. That would be a savings of 80 million gallons per day and 30 billion gallons per year!

·         That's enough to provide water to every residence California for ten days. Or the equivalent to daily residential water consumption for the entire country! Or enough water to fill a 100 foot deep – four square mile lake!

·         The stock air compressor and nozzle work pretty well for clearing most foods. Some items like dried egg yolk and thick sauces are difficult to remove. Though most stubborn foods are taken care of in the dish machine.

·         The level of interest has been incredible. In fact, this week alone I was contacted by Sprout Restaurant Group in LA, MGM Resorts and the San Diego Zoo. Several restaurants and clubs have already made the conversion and I have gotten calls from Canada, Hong Kong and New York.

·         Ever since starting this about six weeks ago I have been working on a way to optimize it for restaurants. The stock air hose works well- but my goal was to have a nozzle* that would have a high power air stream controlled by the main lever and a thumb button that could release a blast of hot steam/water for hard to clean items. Luckily I have some really brilliant friends who were able to coordinate, build and install a prototype. This is the first day we are testing it! We can now easily switch between 120psi air stream, standard water or a hybrid air-water jet.  *patent pending 
 
With the drought getting worse every day it is so important to make this kind of technology readily available to anyone willing to adopt it. I have reached out to companies like Sysco and Ecolab, but so far no-one has been willing to help manufacture of distribute a kit to restaurants. I'm hoping to make a few more prototype nozzles and put together a group of pilot restaurants to test them. I'm also working on putting together a kickstarter campaign to raise enough capital to do a manufacturing run that would make them more economical and accessible to everyone. Anyone who is interested in getting one, or helping with the project, can e-mail me at: airnotwater@gmail.com

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