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National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI)

National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI)

Innovating for a water and energy secure future for the United States

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Lauren Nicole Core

NAWI-supported researchers published a paper in Science Advances about the fundamental mechanism associated with water transport in thin film composite membranes. The article states that water transport in reverse osmosis membranes is governed by pore flow, not a solution-diffusion mechanism. The findings could open the way toward developing more effective materials and techniques to improve the process of reverse osmosis, which is used for removing salt from seawater and increasing access to clean water. Read the publication.

Filed Under: Media Coverage, Post

An article published in Water Online describes the results of a study led by Professor Menachem Elimelech, Sterling Professor of Environmental and Chemical Engineering at Yale University. The multi-institutional team of researchers conducted a combination of experiments and computer simulations to better understand the physics involved in reverse osmosis. The study may lead to more effective uses of reverse osmosis. Read the article and read the study.

Filed Under: Media Coverage

TriplePundit published an article that highlights the selection of 12 new NAWI-supported projects aimed at increasing the efficiency of water desalination and reuse technologies. The article states that new solutions and public-private partnerships like the NAWI-supported projects dovetail with the new United Nations 2023 World Water Development Report, which calls for a renewed focus on collaboration, partnerships, new technologies, and the sharing of data and information.

Read the story

Filed Under: Media Coverage

NAWI Research Director Meagan Mauter and her colleague authored an article for ACT ES&T Engineering that introduces the use of comparative infrared microscopy for directly measuring membrane thermal conductivity in highly porous membrane materials. Their measurements confirm that membrane morphology plays a significant role in effective membrane thermal conductivity and suggest that morphology can guide the selection of theoretical models for approximating membrane thermal conductivity when direct measurements are not possible. Read the paper.

Filed Under: Post, Research Highlight

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) announced the selection of 12 projects that will improve the energy efficiency of desalination and water reuse technologies across the country. The selected projects will drive decarbonization of the water and wastewater sectors through innovative technologies to treat, use, and recycle water to bolster a circular economy and provide the United States with climate-resilient, cost-effective water supplies.

The climate crisis, population growth, and changes in how communities use water contribute to a growing water scarcity problem worldwide. Many regions around the United States are now water-stressed, lacking the water supply required for daily needs, agriculture, and energy and materials production. To meet demand, it is critical that we develop technologies that provide alternative water sources and treat and use water in ways that are efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective.

The selected research projects will attack two key process challenges in the treatment of brackish or salty groundwater, as well as municipal and industrial wastewater: 1) pre-treatment prior to desalination, and 2) post-treatment and disposal of the high-salt concentrate waste created after the desalination process. These two steps often represent a large percentage of the total cost and energy associated with the treatment of nontraditional water sources.

The projects will also advance NAWI’s goal of achieving pipe-parity for 90% of nontraditional water sources. Pipe parity is achieved when the costs and technology solutions for treating and reusing nontraditional water sources, such as wastewater, are equal to the cost of treating conventional water sources.

Read the full list of selected projects.

NAWI is a public-private partnership that brings together a world-class team of industry and academic partners to examine the critical technical barriers and research needed to radically lower the cost and energy of desalination. NAWI is led by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in collaboration with National Energy Technology Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and is funded by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)’s Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office.

Filed Under: News

An article in the International Desalination Association Global Connections quarterly magazine features a mobile direct potable reuse (DPR) demonstration system that purifies municipal wastewater for potable use. The trailer is the result of a collaboration between the Colorado Springs Utilities, Colorado School of Mines (part of the NAWI Alliance), and Carollo Engineers. The trailer uses advanced treatment technologies to destroy pathogens and trap and remove contaminants. Read the article.

Filed Under: Media Coverage

Republished with permission from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.

The nitrate runoff problem, a source of carcinogens and a cause of suffocating algal blooms in U.S. waterways, may not be all gloom and doom. A new study led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign demonstrates an approach for the integrated capture and conversion of nitrate-contaminated waters into valuable ammonia within a single electrochemical cell.

The study, directed by chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Xiao Su, demonstrates a device capable of an eightfold concentration of nitrate, a 24-times enhancement of ammonium production rate and a greater than tenfold enhancement in energy efficiency compared with previous nitrate-to-ammonia electrocatalysis methods.

“By combining separation with reaction, we overcame previously existing limitations of producing ammonia directly from groundwater, where the concentrations of nitrate are very low, and thus make the conversion step inefficient,” Su said.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

“The goal of this study was to use as little energy as possible to remove nitrate from agricultural runoff before it hits our waterways, and transform it back to a fertilizer or sell it as a chemical feedstock,” Su said. “Our technology can thus have an impact on waste treatment, sustainable chemical production and advance decarbonization. We are hoping to bring greater circularity into the nitrogen cycle.”

The team developed a unique, bifunctional electrode that can separate and up-concentrate nitrate from a water stream, while converting to ammonia in a single unit using purely electrochemical control. “The bifunctional electrode combines a redox-polymer adsorbent, which captures the nitrate, with cobalt-based catalysts that drive the electrocatalytic conversion to ammonium,” Su said.

The system was tested in the lab using agricultural runoff collected from drain tiles around the U. of I. research farmlands to evaluate the potential of the technology for real-world conditions, the researchers said.

“This is a very efficient capture and conversion platform with a low footprint,” Su said. “We don’t need separate electrochemical cells for the water treatment and ammonium production or adding extra chemicals or solvents. Instead, we envision a module installed directly onto farmland and run using the power generated from the electrocatalytic process and a small solar panel.”

The team said its next goal is to develop even more selective materials used in the device to achieve higher nitrate removal and accelerate the conversion to ammonia – while engineering larger scale systems for practical deployment in the field.

Kwiyong Kim is the first author of the study, with contributions from Jaeyoung Hong and Jing Lian Ng, from the Su group. The work was carried out in collaboration with Tuan Anh Pham, from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Alexandra Zagalskaya and Vitaly Alexandrov, from the University of Nebraska.

Su also is affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and also is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Illinois.

The National Alliance for Water Innovation, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment at Illinois supported this study.

Editor’s notes:

To reach Xiao Su, call 217-300-0134; email .

The paper “Coupling nitrate capture with ammonia production through bifunctional redox-electrodes” is available online.

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36318-1

Filed Under: Post

The California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) recently held a briefing that explores innovations in desalination research and opportunities to resolve challenges related to energy intensity and brine disposal. The briefing featured NAWI Process Innovation and Intensification Deputy Topic Area Lead Eric Hoek, NAWI Research Director Meagan Mauter, and NAWI Research Advisory Council Chair David Sedlak. Watch the recording.

Filed Under: Events, Multimedia, Video

Maven’s Notebook published a summary of a webinar held in February 2023 that brought together four experts to explore the potential and the challenges of expanding desalination in California. Hosted by the California Council on Science and Technology, the webinar featured NAWI Process Innovation and Intensification Deputy Topic Area Lead Eric Hoek, NAWI Research Director Meagan Mauter, and NAWI Research Advisory Council Chair David Sedlak. Read the summary.

Filed Under: Events

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI), in collaboration with the California Department of Water Resources, today announced the selection of 11 projects for negotiation that will pilot breakthrough technologies and systems that will allow for more reliable and affordable freshwater supplies for the United States. The projects will also contribute to the decarbonization of the water and wastewater sectors through investments in technologies that enhance the efficient use of energy in the use, treatment, and distribution of water.

The selected pilot projects will process non-traditional source waters from a range of locations and produce water in real-world environments. In some cases, projects will partner directly with communities and groups that have historically been underserved by existing water supplies. The research will help to bolster a circular water economy by supporting water reuse and valorizing constituents we currently consider to be waste. Each project will also generate a range of data sets usable by other researchers seeking to advance the field of data analysis and automation, and fault detection in water treatment systems.

The collaborative project teams of industry, academic, national laboratory, and other stakeholders will deliver impact aligned with NAWI’s pipe parity metrics. Pipe parity is defined as technology solutions for treating and reusing nontraditional water sources that are competitive with conventional water sources for specific end use applications.

These pilot systems will directly address the highest priority research needs and technical knowledge gaps outlined in the NAWI Roadmap Publication Series, which was published in 2021.

The selected projects include:

(Listed in no particular order)

  • Concentrate Treatment and Chemical Production Using Innovative Electrodialysis Processes for Near Zero-Waste Discharge

Desalination technologies typically extract a fraction of pure water and leave behind a salty residual liquid called brine or concentrate that is expensive and difficult to dispose of at inland desalination facilities. This project is focused on the design and build of a novel process to further concentrate the brine using electrodialysis, producing more water and transforming the dissolved salts into valuable industrial chemicals. The pilot system will be fielded at the Kay Bailey Hutcheson Desalination Plant in El Paso, Texas.

Partners: New Mexico State University (lead); Veolia Water Technologies and Solutions, Inc.

  • Switchable Solvent ZLD Process for Solving the Inland Desalination Brine Problem

Desalinating and reusing municipal, industrial and agricultural wastewater is an attractive approach for improving the reliability and resilience of water resources. But the presence of dissolved minerals that can plug RO membranes and modules (a process called scaling) limits the amount of water that can be recovered using membrane processes such as RO. This project aims to integrate a novel, high-efficiency process for removing scale-forming ions from brine concentrates, enabling much higher amounts of water recovery and smaller volumes of waste brine. The mobile testbed will demonstrate high-recovery desalination at five sites in California.

Partners: Global Water Innovations, Inc. (lead); Trevi Systems, Inc.

  • Mobile Test Bed for Marginal Water Filtration

Water pre-treatment (before desalination) remains a critical process step for maximizing water production and lowering desalination cost. Current pretreatment technologies are large, slow, and multi-step, making them suitable for large desalination projects but clumsy and less effective for small-scale systems. This project will integrate a novel high-performance nanofiltration membrane system as pretreatment alongside two variants of electrocoagulation as a high-efficiency, all-electric pretreatment strategy. The mobile testbed developed by this team will travel to several sites around Albuquerque, New Mexico, evaluating high-efficiency desalination of different non-traditional water sources.

Partners: Garver USA (lead); City of Rio Rancho, New Mexico; the University of California, Los Angeles; NX Filtration, University of Colorado-Boulder; WaterTectonics, Inc; Rockwell Automation; Powel Water

  • Salt-Free Electrodialysis Metathesis (EDM) for High-Recovery Concentrate Management

Electrodialysis Metathesis (EDM) is a desalination process that uses specialized membranes and chemistry to produce fresh water while transforming the residual brine into two streams – a calcium-rich solution and a sulfate-rich solution. These two streams can be further refined into valuable industrial chemicals, producing a secondary revenue stream from desalination – and reducing the volume of waste brine. Until now, EDM has required the addition of sodium chloride (NaCl) to supply required ions for these solutions. In this project, a new ion-selective membrane technology will be utilized that will eliminate the need for additional NaCl and may lower the energy requirements of traditional EDM by as much as 50%. The system will be tested at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility (BGNDRF) in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Partners: University of Texas, El Paso; New Mexico State University

  • UHP-CCRO with Virtual Curtain to Achieve Minimal Liquid Discharge

Softening is the process of removing certain ions from water that otherwise precipitate during the desalination process, limiting the amount of water that can be recovered from inland brackish water sources using RO. This project proposes to use a novel softening technology to selectively remove these scale-forming ions by forcing the precipitation in the form of hydrotalcite – a mineral that is made from these ions – that could be used as a soil amendment or as an additive for concrete.

Partners: Jacobs Engineering (lead); New Mexico State University; Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation; DuPont

  • Mobile Demonstration DPR: Comparison of RO and non-RO DPR for aerobic and anaerobic effluents

Municipal wastewater can be reprocessed into drinking quality water. Reverse osmosis (RO) has traditionally been a final treatment step that can provide the high purity required to satisfy drinking water quality regulations, but RO generates a brine waste stream and drives up the cost and energy required for direct potable reuse (DPR). This project will perform a side-by-side demonstration at Silicon Valley Clean Water’s treatment plant in Redwood City, California, of both an RO-based treatment train and a novel treatment train that achieves nearly the same purity without using RO. The team will also investigate how different types of wastewater treatment technologies produce effluents that are either easier or harder to transform into drinking quality water.

Partners: Colorado School of Mines (lead); Stanford University; University of Colorado, Boulder

  • Piloting an Electrical, Modular, and Distributed ZLD Arsenic-Removal Technology

Arsenic is a pervasive, naturally occurring carcinogenic contaminant in groundwater. Thousands of wells in California and around the world have arsenic levels that exceed safe levels, forcing communities to install expensive and hard-to-operate treatment systems or shutter their local wells and travel miles to fill water jugs for home use. This project will demonstrate a new simple, reliable and highly automated electrochemical process that uses iron and electrical current to safely remove arsenic in well water. The team will partner with the community of Allensworth, California, a rural community whose residents must drive miles to pay for retail water from a kiosk.

Partners: University of California, Berkeley (lead); Allensworth Progressive Association

  • Reciprocating Piston Batch Reverse Osmosis: Pushing the limits of efficiency and fouling resistance

Conventional reverse osmosis utilizes high pressure pumps to continuously supply pressure into RO modules and generate fresh water. This steady-state process can result in the gradual build-up of organic and inorganic precipitates on membrane surfaces (known as fouling), which reduces water production and requires frequent cleaning. This project will demonstrate a novel batch-mode process whereby RO modules are pressurized using a piston-based pump and fresh water is produced in a non-continuous process. This approach to reverse osmosis not only uses less energy but may also greatly reduce the rate of fouling of membrane surfaces.

Partners: Purdue University (lead); Colorado School of Mines; Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  • Integrated Counter-Flow Reverse Osmosis Treatment for High-Salinity Produced Water

High salinity produced water is predominant in U.S. oilfields. Reverse osmosis (RO) has been used to desalinate low-salinity produced water, but has a salinity limit below that of most U.S. produced waters. This project will field a novel advancement that uses commercial RO membranes and infrastructure, and counterflow RO (CFRO) in order to enable treatment of high salinity water by managing the osmotic pressure differential across the membranes of sequential stages in a counter-flow arrangement.

Partners: Aris Water (lead); New Mexico State University; Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University; Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; Garver, OLISoft, Inc.

  • Field Pilot Testing of Electrically Conductive Reverse Osmosis (ECRO) Membranes for High Mineral Content Brackish Groundwater Desalination

Unconventional and difficult-to-treat water resources, such as brackish groundwater, have complex chemistries, and treating them to freshwater levels requires complex processes consisting of multiple stages of pre-treatment followed by membrane desalination, making them costly and difficult to operate which limit their widespread application and adoption by society and various industries. Both ECNF and ECRO use combinations of applied electrical fields and in situ electrochemical generation to actively resist membrane fouling – the deposition of particles onto membrane surfaces that causes pore clogging and diminished performance over time. The project will operate the pilot system as two parallel trains to evaluate the head-to-head performance of ECRO compared with conventional RO at Sand City, California.

Partners: Pacific Water Solutions, Inc.

  • A Convergent Monitoring Platform for Dynamic Characterization of Reverse Osmosis Membrane Fouling and Demonstration of Innovative Control Strategies

Membrane fouling and scaling is a pervasive and costly aspect of many membrane-based water treatment systems. This project will demonstrate and validate an unprecedented sensing/time series monitoring system at Orange County Water District for the dynamic characterization of reverse osmosis (RO) biofouling, mineral scaling, and organic fouling. The data obtained from this system will be combined with pilot and full-scale RO performance data to train next-generation Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) models to better forecast and mitigate fouling and scaling. This project will also evaluate novel sensor technologies and a new commercial membrane technology that can resist the application of oxidizing cleaning chemicals.

Partners: Rice University (lead); University of Texas, Austin; University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Orange County Water District; Noria Water Technologies, Inc., NALA Membranes, Inc.; Carollo Engineers

NAWI is a public-private partnership that brings together a world-class team of industry and academic partners to examine the critical technical barriers and research needed to radically lower the cost and energy of desalination. NAWI is led by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in collaboration with National Energy Technology Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and is funded by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Energy, Freshwater, Research, Water

In April 2022, a team of engineers hiked into California’s Sierra Nevada mountains to hunt for snow. Instead, they found mostly bare, dry dirt and only a few of the snow patches that provide one-third of California’s water supply.

In the coming decades, water scarcity and insecurity are likely to intensify across much of the United States. In California, the Sierra Nevadas are expected to lose a staggering 65% of their snowpack over the next century, said Hariswaran (Hari) Sitaraman, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That loss, plus political, economic, and other challenges, is making it essential for drought-prone states, like California, to tap alternative water sources such as brackish (or salty) waters and agricultural runoff.

And yet, the most common way to treat and reuse nontraditional water supplies is through a process called reverse osmosis, which can be both expensive and energy intensive.

Now, Sitaraman and Ilenia Battiato, two members of the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) research consortium, have used supercomputers to study reverse osmosis systems as a whole—a first for both the type and scale of reverse osmosis research. With their new technique, the duo also discovered a new system design that could make these technologies about 40% more energy efficient—and therefore more cost-effective—while producing the same amount and quality of clean drinking water.

“Until now, people have been looking at a tiny piece of the entire reverse osmosis module and drawing conclusions from that,” Sitaraman said. “But we looked at the entire thing.”

The results are published in a new paper in Separation and Purification Technology.

Along with Battiato, an assistant professor of energy science and engineering at Stanford University, Sitaraman created a fluid dynamics solver—a numerical tool that can analyze how fluids, like salty water, flow into a reverse osmosis system, pass through several membrane filters, and come out clean on the other side.

With their solver, Sitaraman and Battiato studied reverse osmosis systems with high precision, enabling them to uncover any snags or inefficiencies. For example, to filter brackish waters, reverse osmosis systems use high pressure to push the water through several membranes, which, like sophisticated coffee filters, block salts and other minerals from passing through. That process cleans the water, but it also creates thin layers of salty buildup on the membranes. And that buildup can affect how well the water flows, potentially reducing the system’s efficiency.

“That thin layer needs to be measured correctly to understand how much pure water you get out of salt water,” Sitaraman said. “If you don’t capture that right, you cannot understand how much it costs to run a reverse osmosis plant.”

A more efficient reverse osmosis system is more cost-effective, too.

Yet, most reverse osmosis plant owners do not have a high-performance computer to replicate Sitaraman and Battiato’s high-fidelity simulations—which so accurately mimic real-life reverse osmosis technologies—to uncover snags in their own systems. So, Sitaraman performed the complex work of creating a simpler model equation that can predict a system’s mass transfer, estimating how much pure water can be filtered out of brackish water. With his model, engineers can now discover how to improve the efficiency (and cost) of their own systems.

“If the economics improve,” Sitaraman said, “then of course reverse osmosis systems will be more widely used. And if they’re more energy efficient, they will contribute less to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.”

That is a huge win, but Sitaraman and Battiato’s tools can benefit far more than reverse osmosis plant owners. Other researchers can build on their work to study the efficiency and cost of all kinds of reverse osmosis filtration technologies beyond those used to treat unconventional water sources. The food industry uses these filters to create highly concentrated fruit juices, more flavorful cheeses, and much more. Aquariums need them to remove harmful chemicals from their waters. And reverse osmosis systems can even extract valuable minerals and other substances that could be used to make cheap fertilizer or fuel.

One huge advantage of high-fidelity simulations, Battiato said, is the ability to study a vast range of reverse osmosis system configurations without investing the time and money required to build and experiment with real-life systems.

“We want the system to correctly capture the physics,” Battiato said, “but we are theoretically not constrained by manufacturing.”

With simulations, the team can quickly explore far more potential designs and home in on the best. That is how Battiato and Sitaraman identified their potentially more effective arrangement of spacers (which are bits within the reverse osmosis system that create turbulence and keep channels open to help water flow through). Their new spacer arrangement not only improves the system’s energy efficiency by 40%, but it also produces the same amount of equally pure water.

Although the duo’s simulations accurately replicate real-life systems, they are still theoretical. Sitaraman hopes another research team will build their design and evaluate how closely the real system matches their models. In the meantime, their higher-resolution (or more precise and comprehensive) simulations could help researchers avoid making inaccurate assumptions about how reverse osmosis systems work and, in so doing, learn how to improve the technologies.

Today, most engineers use trial and error to discover how to improve their reverse osmosis systems. But that process is slow, and water shortages are coming fast. With Battiato and Sitaraman’s simulations, engineers could speed up the development of more efficient and cost-effective technologies, so the country can access unconventional water sources when communities—like drought-stricken western towns—desperately need them.

“Water is a scarce resource,” Battiato said. “I don’t think we can afford to do coarse optimization anymore. We need to save every drop of water that we can.”

Learn more about the National Alliance of Water Innovation and their efforts to secure an affordable, energy-efficient, and resilient water supply for the United States.

The National Alliance of Water Innovation is a public–private partnership that brings together a world-class team of industry and academic partners to examine the critical technical barriers and research needed to radically lower the cost and energy of desalination. The alliance is led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in collaboration with the National Energy Technology Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory and is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office.

Filed Under: Post

NAWI Executive Director Dr. Peter Fiske presented at the Waterloo Filtration Institute 2022 Annual Conference (WFI 2022) on December 6-7, 2022 from 11:15–11:40 a.m. EST. With the theme, “Sustainable Filtration Solutions for Healthy Living”, the virtual conference addressed the increasingly critical roles of filtration and separation for healthy buildings and the surrounding living environment. Fiske presented on “Pushing the Limit on Desalination: An Update from the NAWI Research Program.” Watch the recording.

Filed Under: Events, Multimedia, Video

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) today announced the selection of seven projects that will advance breakthrough technologies for reliable and affordable freshwater supplies for the United States. The selected projects will conduct early-stage applied research on desalination and treatment of nontraditional water sources for beneficial end uses. The research will help to bolster a circular water economy by supporting water reuse and valorizing constituents we currently consider to be waste.

The collaborative project teams of industry, academic, national laboratory, and other stakeholders will deliver impact aligned with NAWI’s pipe parity metrics. Pipe parity is defined as technology solutions for treating and reusing nontraditional water sources that are competitive with conventional water sources for specific end use applications.

The research will directly address the highest priority research needs and technical knowledge gaps outlined in the NAWI Roadmap Publication Series, which was published in 2021. The projects focus on addressing challenges related to either autonomous water or precision separation. The autonomous water challenge area aims to develop sensor networks and adaptive process control for improved water desalination treatment systems. The precision separation challenge area aims to develop flexible platform technologies that remove (and/or recover) target compounds from one or more priority classes of contaminants and from specific water end use sectors.

The selected projects include:

(Listed in no particular order)

  • Energy-Efficient Selective Removal of Metal Ions from Mining Influenced Waters Using H-Bonded Organic-Inorganic Frameworks

The H-Bonded Organic-Inorganic Frameworks technology will bring tremendous value into the treatment of nonconventional waters with reduced energy consumption, system complexity, and waste management costs while providing unmatched brine valorization and profit recovery. The precision separation and recovery of metals in acid mine drainage (AMD) waters may also expand the availability of critical materials and help alleviate dependency on metal supply chains for the U.S.

Partners: Rio Tinto Services Inc. (lead), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of Oklahoma, California Department of Water Resources (funding partner)

  • Data-Driven Fault Detection and Process Control for Potable Reuse with Reverse Osmosis

This project will use machine learning and artificial intelligence to reduce energy and chemical use, improve operational support, increase treatment system uptime, and improve confidence in purified water quality.

Partners: Carollo Engineers, Inc. (lead), Yokogawa Corporation of America, National Water Research Institute, U.S. Military Academy West Point, tntAnalysis, Las Vegas Municipal Water District, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, West Basin Municipal Water District, Orange County Water District, Baylor University, California Department of Water Resources (funding partner)

  • Multifunctional Membrane for Oxyanion Removal

This project will generate a technology that enables the selective removal and recovery of metals/oxyanions from water, enabling the use of a non-traditional water source, significantly reducing the cost and energy of treatment, and valorizing compounds that would typically be considered waste.

Partners: University of California, Berkeley (lead), Greeley and Hansen LLC, NTS Innovations Inc., California Department of Water Resources (funding partner)

  • Copper Recovery from Mining Process Waters with Ion-Selective Electrodialysis

Copper recovery will help to achieve pipe parity with conventional treatment of mining process waters and/or reuse at copper mines and refineries while simultaneously improving environmental sustainability. The project will also provide platform technology that can be used to develop additional ion-selective cation exchange membranes, targeting other ionic contaminants of interest, such as lead and cadmium.

Partners: Rice University (lead), The University of Texas El Paso, Magna Imperio Systems Corp.

  • Novel Bipolar Membrane Assisted Electrosorption Process for the Selective Removal of Boron

This project will overcome the persisting inefficiencies in the current state-of-the art boron removal strategies. The research will also provide a demonstration of an effective method for electrosorption of weak acid/base species and selective removal of trace contaminants.

Partners: Yale University (lead), University of Michigan, Magna Imperio Systems Corp.

  • Redox-Mediated Electrodes for Precision Separation of Nitrogen and Phosphorus Oxyanions

Selective electrosorption technologies for the separation and concentration of charged nutrients could enable a sustainable water treatment paradigm, particularly for small communities that struggle to operate centralized facilities and highly sensitive biological removal systems. 

Partners: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (lead), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Voltea Inc.

  • Selective Electrocatalytic Destruction of PFAS using a Reactive Electrochemical Membrane System

This project will overcome technical limitations of existing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) destruction technologies by improving selectivity for PFAS destruction, minimizing toxic byproduct formation, and limiting short-chain PFAS formation.

Partners: University of Illinois Chicago (lead), Purdue University, Argonne National Laboratory, M. Davis & Sons Inc., Trimeric Corporation, CDM Federal Programs Corporation, Orange County Water District

NAWI is a public-private partnership that brings together a world-class team of industry and academic partners to examine the critical technical barriers and research needed to radically lower the cost and energy of desalination. NAWI is led by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in collaboration with National Energy Technology Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and is funded by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Energy, Research, Water

In a recent waterloop podcast, NAWI Executive Director Peter Fiske explains how desalination is becoming more efficient and effective through innovation in membranes, technologies for handling brine, and extraction of valuable elements. He also talks about upcoming NAWI pilot projects, the role of desalination in addressing water scarcity, and international collaboration. Listen to the podcast.

Filed Under: Multimedia, Podcast

The American Water Works Association (AWWA) — a nonprofit organization with 51,000+ members who supply 80% of the nation’s drinking water — has embarked on an effort to provide a clear and actionable vision for water utilities to achieve sustainability (in the broadest meaning of the word) by 2050. The project, aptly named Water 2050, is spearheading a series of community engagement efforts, fostering invitation-only think tanks, and commissioning timely and relevant studies. The studies will determine optimal pathways and ideal targets for water and wastewater utilities to follow as they reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to zero (or below), help to maximize the total value of One Water, and address longstanding inequities related to the the availability of safe and affordable drinking water for disadvantaged communities.

NAWI was invited to participate in the first of 5 invitation-only think tanks. Focused on the topic of sustainability, the first think tank included NAWI Industry Advisory Council member Joe Jacangelo (who is also the current President of the AWWA) and a wide range of experts, including many from outside the water utility community. The proceedings of the 2-day deliberation will be summarized into a draft report that will be circulated in approximately 2 months. AWWA Water 2050 will convene future think tanks in 2022 and 2023 on the subjects of technology, economics, governance, and social/demographic factors. 

In spite of the team’s diverse background, a few key themes and issues rose to the top of the discussion:

  • Water and wastewater utilities need to deliver benefits in addition to safe and affordable drinking water, including physical infrastructure that provides multiple benefits to communities such as ecological services and natural disaster resilience.
  • The water and energy sectors need to work together to coordinate water treatment and energy supplies in ways that maximize system resilience, lower cost, and reduce GHG emissions.
  • Utilities need to shift from a solitary water system focus to an integrated watershed mindset in which water utilities coordinate with one another and other water users and stakeholders to optimize the use and reuse of water.

Filed Under: Events, Post

The National Water Research Institute (NWRI) named Dr. Eric M.V. Hoek, NAWI Deputy Topic Area Lead for Process Innovation and Intensification, as the 2022 Clarke Prize Laureate for Outstanding Achievement in Water Science and Technology. The Clarke Prize is awarded to leaders in the areas of water research, science, technology, or policy in the United States. Hoek is a Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). At UCLA, Dr. Hoek leads the UCLA Nanomaterials & Membrane Technology Research (NanoMeTeR) Lab where research explores the union of membrane technologies, nanomaterials and electrochemistry for water, energy and environmental applications. The 29th Clarke Prize Lecture will be delivered by Hoek on 29 October at the award ceremony in Irvine, California.

Filed Under: Post

After a summer of COVID restrictions, travel and (hopefully) a bit of vacation, many of us are heading back into the office or classroom.  While we might not spend a great deal of time thinking about the implications for our water use at work, NAWI friends at Phoenix Process Equipment Co. and Aquacell Water Recycling Ltd. certainly do.  Over the past month, they have graciously hosted NAWI members on tours of the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco and Meta corporate campus in Menlo Park, CA (yes, that Meta) where they designed and installed onsite “blackwater” reuse facilities. They shared some important lessons in operating small-scale water treatment systems.

First the stats.  Both facilities were designed to accommodate large office populations and treat between 40 to 90 thousand gallons per day of rainwater, toilet, and sink wastewater to a quality safe for additional toilet flushing and/or irrigation (of salinity sensitive redwoods!). Both facilities used roughly the same process train consisting of belt filter (with solids discharged to sewer), aerobic membrane bioreactor system (MBR), RO, ultraviolet (UV), and remineralization. While the Salesforce system was idle at the time of our visit, Meta’s system was just getting restarted after a long COVID hiatus, and will be resuming water delivery in the coming weeks. 

Next the insights:  

  1. COVID threw onsite systems a major curveball. Meta’s campus was fully populated before the 2.5 year-long COVID shutdown; the new “normal” office population (about one-third of pre-pandemic numbers) is sufficient to sustain the MBR, but is far below the original design capacity. We had some great discussions about resilient designs, including what it would take for systems to operate at a mere 10% of their design capacity for an extended period of time.  
  2. Tanks, tanks, tanks! Water treatment and reuse systems require a LOT of water storage. This is often overlooked in academic studies. Not only are tanks expensive ($2-$10 per stored gallon) but they also have a significant footprint — not cheap when it means displacing coveted parking spots and valuable Silicon Valley real estate. Ideally, below-grade storage tanks are integrated into the original building design. Researchers probably need to do a better job of factoring storage into the total cost projections for on-site systems. 
  3. Insensitivity (indifference?) to electricity consumption. During both of our tours, we had a hard time even finding the electrical meter and system designers often have no information about the actual system energy use once its installed and operating.
  4. Odor and color control is essential. Office building tenants do NOT want to smell even a whiff of typical wastewater treatment plant “fragrance”, and tenants don’t want to flush their toilets with yellow water. A lot of our process designs for onsite blackwater reuse are dictated by odor and color rather than by safety concerns. We wondered aloud where NAWI technologies could make an impact in these two important aesthetic areas. 
  5. Permitting blackwater recycling systems remains a regulatory challenge. While greywater recycling has become significantly easier to permit over the past decade, blackwater systems are really first-of-a-kind demonstration sites in most regions. They are often held to the same standards for daily monitoring, sample collection, and thus demand frequent sensor monitoring and calibration. Technology and regulations are going to have to evolve together for building-scale reuse to really take hold.
  6. These systems are far too complex to be managed by a typical property manager or site engineer. Both sites we visited had real-time remote monitoring. The (operational) Meta facility had a dedicated Level 2 operator onsite, as well as a contract with a local laboratory for daily sampling collection/analysis. Additional facilities operation support and maintenance was a phone call away. 

Filed Under: Post

In a few days, NAWI will host a delegation from NEOM, a historic project to develop fully renewable and sustainable communities along the barren northwestern coast of Saudi Arabia. The NEOM project arose from Saudi Vision 2030, and is an effort to diversify the country’s economy and demonstrate at full scale communities powered entirely by renewable energy. 

Given its location in one of the most arid places on Earth, innovations in desalination are foundational (and critical) to the viability of the project. Not only will 100% of the water for the communities and industries of NEOM come from desalinated water from the Red Sea, but the NEOM economy will be fueled in part by an entire economy that transforms the constituents of the reverse osmosis (RO) concentrate into valuable chemicals and physical products. 

Much of NAWI’s research program and vision aligns with the needs and goals of NEOM. We envision novel modular desalination systems that recover 100% of the water from a variety of non-traditional water sources — as well as brine concentration, crystallization, and valorization technologies that take dissolved constituents and transform them into high-value, carbon negative products. And, with an entire economic system powered by renewable energy, NAWI’s research into adaptive, dynamic, and resilient water treatment systems and control strategies may play a critical role in enabling renewables-dependent infrastructure to operate reliably.

Filed Under: Events

After 2 years of postponed, canceled, or remote scientific interactions, the NAWI research community has been well represented at summer water research conferences.  These conferences have been venues for sharing the results of NAWI’s early R&D accomplishments (roadmaps, baselines, WaterTAP, WaterDAMS, research outputs, etc.) and an opportunity to take stock of NAWI’s influence on the water desalination field more broadly.  Below are several highlights from NAWI Research Consortium and Alliance members who attended the conferences and noted the degree to which NAWI’s research agenda has influenced the direction of water treatment across the broader research community.  

NAMS 2022: Phoenix, AZ

Profs. Manish Kumar of UT Austin (a NAWI project performer and Beamline Characterization Advisory Council member) and Mary-Laura Lind of ASU hosted the North American Membrane Society annual meeting in Phoenix, AZ.  A hybrid remote and in-person conference, this well attended set of workshops and conferences offered the first opportunity for the membrane community to come together after release of our roadmapping and baselining products.  Manish mentioned that “NAWI roadmaps and NAWI supported research has shifted the conversation in the membrane community (as seen in NAMS meetings) and in the environmental engineering community more broadly towards electrification of water treatment and a focus on resource recovery in a significant way. Interest in oxyanion pollutant treatment has also grown as a result of NAWI activities as seen in presentations on these topics.”

AEESP 2022: Washington University in St. Louis

Prof. Dan Giammar of WUSTL (a NAWI Cartographer) was the co-chair of the AEESP conference held on the beautiful WUSTL campus.  The agenda focused on convergence research, highlighting (among other topics) ways in which research, practice, and entrepreneurship were critical to addressing issues in water, climate, and sustainability. Dan noted that “a substantial number of the 320 abstracts submitted to the 2022 AEESP Research and Education Conference were focused on advanced water treatment processes.  When our program committee had to determine an effective way for thematically grouping the presentations, the best framework that emerged was based on A-PRIME.  Electrified treatment processes, modular membrane systems, and precision separations were all highlighted in the conference program.”

Other highlights included NAWI Next-Gen Katie Weitzel winning the best poster award at AEESP for her research on “Treatment and Reuse of Agricultural Drainage Water: Challenges and Opportunities” and Dr. Tim Bartholomew, Dr. Dan Gunter, Prof. Daniel Gingerich and myself hosting a pre-conference workshop with 90+ registrants on NAWI’s WaterTAP and WaterDAMS tools. (All materials are available here, for those of you unable to make the workshop, but are interested in learning more!) The highlight of the conference for me was seeing Amy Childress’ (a NAWI Cartographer) group at USC present on their cooling water treatment baseline analysis using NAWI’s WaterTAP tools.  

GRC in Membranes: Materials and Processes

NAWI Deputy Topic Area Lead Jeff McCutcheon and several NAWI research consortium and Alliance members are attending the GRC in Membranes: Materials and Processes as you read this dispatch. Having seen a preview of the invited speakers, Jeff anticipates tremendous interest and lively discussion around Daniel Miller’s (LBNL) presentation of his NAWI-funded project on Computational and Experimental Test Beds for Prediction of RO Module Fouling.  Jeff also noted that “NAWI has had a big impact on the membrane science community, particularly by highlighting the critical need for innovation in brine management as a key opportunity to lower the cost and energy use for desalination in the United States.”

Several other upcoming conferences will afford additional opportunities for NAWI to disseminate research results and share our collective vision for accessing non-traditional water at pipe parity through innovations in A-PRIME. We also look forward to hearing about innovations in the field, successes that change the R&D landscape in one or more A-PRIME areas, or new research directions that NAWI should consider allocating funding toward. 

Filed Under: Research Highlight

Katie Weitzel and her team were awarded for their research poster titled Treatment and Reuse of Agricultural Drainage Water: Challenges and Opportunities. Weitzel, a Ph.D. student at the University of Cincinnati, attended the 2022 Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) Research and Education Conference to represent her work. 

“There were a lot of people interested in this work and I had a lot of interaction with people during the poster session,” said Weitzel. “It was nice to see so many people interested in this and starting discussions about treatment of non-traditional water sources.”

Weitzel and her team’s research focuses on water innovation surrounding agricultural drainage, and their poster presented information from the agricultural baseline work they’ve been investigating as part of the NAWI research consortium. The poster content complemented the conference theme, “Environmental Engineering at the Confluence,” which covered the full breadth of environmental engineering. The conference explored emerging developments in the field and focused four areas of convergence: convergence of education and research, convergence of research in air, water, and soil, convergence of research and action, and convergence of research, practice, and entrepreneurship.

Filed Under: Post

 I was recently introduced to Prof. R. S. Silver’s 1979 history of desalination, slyly titled For want of a nail (Desalination Volume 31, Issues 1–3, October 1979, Pages 39-44). Silver summarizes his career in desalination research, noting that it is often the small things in desalination that end up mattering the most. 

This cautionary tale weighed on my mind when I recently toured the Advanced Water Treatment Plant (AWTP) located in Cambria, California. Prior to the development of the plant, Cambria had relied on groundwater from a nearby creek. The Central Californian local community knew it was time for a water-supply related change after years of low rainfall and over-reliance on a single water supply.  

Cambria’s AWTP⁠—a secondary water supply based on reuse of treated wastewater⁠—was thus built in 2015 during the height of California’s most recent multi-year drought. 

The picturesque town’s treated wastewater is first diverted to a percolation basin where it seeps into the subsurface. It then interacts with freshwater percolating from the mountains to the East and seawater seeping inland from the West. The mixed groundwater is then pumped out of the basin, filtered, and desalinated with a 2-stage Reverse Osmosis (RO) system. This RO system recovers 92% of the fresh water, which is then reintroduced into the town’s groundwater well-field further upslope. The MF-RO-UV-H2O2 unit processes of the packaged desalination facility are elegantly housed in a set of cargo containers, cleverly laid out so that the entire system resembles a set of large tan Legos.

Unfortunately, R. S. Silver’s admonition became particularly apparent once the system was up and running. The small amount of brine generated from the facility was disposed of by pumping it into an evaporation basin nearby. The evaporation basin itself was rigorously engineered to prevent leaks but… the cool foggy weather common for the central coast resulted in very low evaporation rates. And, when a winter storm caused runoff to overtop the basin, the entire water project was put on indefinite hold.

The entire “kingdom” of brackish desalination has been waiting for a brine disposal nail.

On a related note, NAWI has begun to review Concept Papers submitted in response to our recent call for proposals for piloting novel small-scale desalination systems (read the Pilot Program FAQ for more information). I am very hopeful that the desalination community will come forward with breakthrough approaches to further treating and reducing (or even eliminating?) the liquid brine waste stream that has bedeviled brackish desalination for so long.

Filed Under: Post

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), in partnership with the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI), announced USD 29,180,282 in total funding (USD 17,730,476 in federal funds and USD 11,449,806 in cost share [39%]) for sixteen projects to support the development of innovative water treatment technologies for the U.S. These selected projects, in combination with other ongoing NAWI-funded projects, are advancing research in NAWI’s challenge areas including autonomous operation, modular and manufacturable systems, and electrified treatment processes.

The projects will deliver impact aligned with NAWI’s pipe parity metrics and further the country towards net-zero emissions by 2050. The selected projects aim to address some of the greatest challenges relating to water and energy security. All NAWI-selected projects support the development of low-cost and energy-efficient desalination technologies to improve nationwide water infrastructure decarbonization and to build climate resilience.

“We are eager to partner with NAWI to support these awardees, whose work will improve the quality and availability of water for human consumption, agriculture, and energy and materials production,” said Kelly Speakes-Backman, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy. “The projects announced today will apply cutting-edge research and development to our water-management challenges, ensuring we make the most of every water resource at our disposal.”

Improved desalination technologies can make nontraditional sources of water a cost-effective alternative. These nontraditional sources can then be applied to a variety of beneficial uses, such as industrial process water and irrigation. As an added benefit, these water supplies contain valuable minerals and organic materials that can be reclaimed and usefully repurposed.

The selected projects will perform research in autonomous operation, modular and manufacturable systems, and electrified treatment processes. These research topics support the technology-related goals established in the NAWI Master Roadmap, which was published in the summer of 2021.

Here are the sixteen selected projects:

  • The University of Texas at Austin (Lead), Carollo Engineers, Georgia Institute of Technology, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), BlueTech Research, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Eastman Chemical Company (North Ghent and Indian Orchard Sites.)

Title: Assessing the Impact of A-PRIME on Industrial Sector Supply Portfolios: Chemical Industry Case Studies

This project will develop a circular water systems analysis (CWSA) software tool to enable industrial water users to better quantify the total value of implementing novel water treatment, desalination, and reuse systems at their facilities.

  • University of California, Berkeley (Lead), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Fresno State University, University of California, Davis, and Meridian Institute 

Title: Next-Gen Desalination for Agricultural Drainage

This project will complete the first ever study of how distributed desalination and water reuse could secure new water supplies for California’s Central Valley while potentially creating new economic opportunity through the manufacturing of valuable products from brine waste streams from desalination.

  • Stanford University (Lead)

Title: Robust Technology and Policy Pathways for Urban Water Security

This project will develop a new decision support software tool to enable urban water planners and operators to identify cost- and energy-optimal non-traditional source water augmentation pathways, including desalination, that enhance municipal resilience against current and future water shortages.

  • Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Lead), Baylor University, Colorado School of Mines, Colorado Springs Utilities, inCTRL Solutions, IntelliFlux Controls, Inc., and Rockwell Automation

Title: Advanced Process Controls – Autonomous Control and Optimization

This project will develop novel process control methods for water treatment facilities that enable operators to predict and adapt to impending process upsets and equipment failures to enable safe and reliable operations of desalination and water reuse facilities.

  • University of California at Irvine (Lead), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Orange County Water District (OCWD), Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD), Glacier Technologies International, Inc., Brown and Caldwell, and Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts (LACSD)

Title: Process Twins for Decision-Support and Dynamic Energy/Cost Prediction in Water Reuse Processes

This project will develop physical and digital twins of desalination and related treatment processes operating in several water plants to enable operators to better understand the consequences of large deviations from normal operation.

  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Lead), University of California at Los Angeles, and California State University, San Bernardino

Title: Analytics for Causal Analysis and Decision Support Models for Autonomous and Smart Water Treatment

This project will push the frontier of artificial intelligence in water treatment operations by developing autonomous, adaptive, and co-learning water treatment and desalination systems enabled by fundamental process operation building blocks that predict the operational performance of such systems.

  • Washington University in St. Louis (Lead), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and WaterTectonics, Inc.

Title: Tailored Reductants for Selenium Removal in Iron Electrocoagulation

This project will target selenium, a problematic naturally-occurring element that is not easily removed by reverse osmosis (RO), and can contaminate wastewater in many industrial applications, with a novel electrochemical method of particle removal called electrocoagulation.

  • University of California at Los Angeles (Lead), National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Yale University, and University of Connecticut

Title: Ultra-High Pressure Reverse Osmosis (UHPRO) Membrane and Module Design and Optimization

This project will develop new RO membranes that can withstand the ultra-high osmotic pressures created when desalinating concentrated brines.

  • University of Connecticut (Lead), The University of Texas at Austin, Argonne National Laboratory, NALA Systems, Inc., ZwitterCo, Inc., and Vortex Engineering LLC

Title: Additive Manufacturing for Customized Membranes

This project advances a breakthrough method for manufacturing thin-film composite membranes using Nano-scale 3D printing that will enable membranes to be created for specific separations needs at low cost. 

  • New Mexico State University (Lead), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium, Flow-Tech Systems, LLC, EVUS, Inc., El Paso Water, Aqua Membranes Inc., and NGL Energy Partners, LP

Title: Electromagnetic Field for Membrane Scaling Control

This project will rigorously and systematically investigate electromagnetic fields (EMF) that have been shown to suppress the nucleation of “scale-forming” minerals in desalination systems.

  • Texas A&M University (Lead), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, WaterTectonics, Inc., KIT Professionals, Inc., Orange County Water District, and CAP Water & Power International, Inc.

Title: Electrocoagulation/Electrooxidation to Accelerate Cost-Effective Water Reuse

This project will develop hybrid iron-iron and iron-carbon electrocoagulation/electro oxidation (EC/EO) systems for pretreating secondary wastewater effluent prior to microfiltration and desalination and improve log10 virus reduction and remove suspended particles in a single step.

  • University of California at Los Angeles (Lead), Georgia Institute of Technology, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Knoxville Utilities Board, WaterTectonics, Inc., and Southern Company

Title: Enabling Minimal Liquid Discharge through a Modular, Flexible, and Electrified Pretreatment System

This project will develop a combination electrochemical reactor based on electrocoagulation with an immersed filtration system to react and separate problematic contaminants in water in a single modular step prior to desalination.

  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Lead), William Marsh Rice University, Auburn University, Stanford University, and Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)

Title: Direct Electrochemical Reduction of Selenium to Achieve A-PRIME Water Treatment

This project utilizes breakthrough computational techniques to design novel electro-reactive materials that could directly chemically reduce and remove selenium from non-traditional water sources as a pre-treatment step prior to desalination. 

  • Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Lead), Georgia Institute of Technology University, ReactWell, LLC, and Tennessee Valley Authority

Title: Selective Separation of Selenium Oxyanions by Chelating Hydrogen-Bonding Ligands

This project explores a promising family of chemical compounds that could directly bond to selenium atoms prior to RO for efficient removal of this challenging contaminant.

  • University of California at Berkeley (Lead), Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Colorado School of Mines, Colorado Higher Education Competitive Research Authority (CHECRA), and ZOMA Foundation

Title: Porous Polymer Networks (PPN) and Membranes for PFAS and Selenium Removal from Water

This project will design novel cage-like molecules that can be modified to selectively bond to specific contaminants in water, focusing on removal of selenium and PFAS, which are problematic constituents in desalination and water reuse systems.

  • University of California at Berkeley (Lead) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Title: Electrochemical Advanced Oxidation

This project will create a novel, low-cost electrochemical process for oxidizing and removing organic contaminants from water suitable for pre-treatment prior to RO in distributed treatment and water reuse environments. 

NAWI is a public-private partnership that brings together a world-class team of industry and academic partners to examine the critical technical barriers and research needed to radically lower the cost and energy of desalination. NAWI is led by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in collaboration with National Energy Technology Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and is funded by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Advanced Manufacturing Office.

Filed Under: News

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), in partnership with the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI), announced a $5 million solicitation for small-scale desalination and water-reuse technologies that will improve the safety, security, and affordability of America’s water supply.

The Pilot Program request for proposals (RFP) offers applicants the chance to design, build, operate, and test desalination and water reuse treatment systems that produce clean water from non-traditional water sources, such as brackish water, seawater, produced and extracted water, and wastewater.

“The innovative desalination technologies funded through this initiative will help us build a modern water-management infrastructure that can treat a wider range of water resources and equitably deliver water when and where it is needed,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Kelly Speakes-Backman.

Many domestic water sources contain high levels of salt and contaminants, a problem that can be intensified by changing precipitation patterns associated with climate change. This RFP will support projects that significantly reduce the levelized cost of water for small-scale desalination systems, helping the U.S. diversify its water supplies, improve its resilience to the effects of climate change, and move closer to net-zero carbon emissions.

Pilot projects that support the research objectives established in the NAWI Roadmap Publication Series stand the best chance of receiving an award. NAWI will ultimately select 6-8 research teams from industry, academia and the U.S. National Laboratories, with a minimum 35% cost share required from each team.

Concept papers are due by Wednesday, June 29, 2022. To learn more, read the full request for proposals.

NAWI is a public-private partnership that brings together a world-class team of industry and academic partners to examine the critical technical barriers and research needed to radically lower the cost and energy of desalination. NAWI is led by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in collaboration with National Energy Technology Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and is funded by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Advanced Manufacturing Office.

Filed Under: News

An Enterprise Approach to Developing Industrial Membrane-based Solutions
A Virtual Seminar with Dr. Adil Dhalla
Singapore Membrane Consortium (SG MEM)
Monday, May 23, 2022 at 12:30 pm PT

Join Singapore Membrane Consortium’s (SG MEM) Dr. Adil Dhalla for a seminar presented by the National Alliance for Water Innovation on Monday, May 23, at 12:30 p.m. PT. He will discuss SG MEM’s framework for taking early stage membrane inventions to commercially viable solutions. These solutions help to tackle both water and environmental challenges.

Hybrid Event Highlights Partnerships and Collaborations for Platform Solutions

One of the biggest challenges for commercialization of novel ideas, even if the Intellectual Property is duly protected, is the gap between laboratory processes, results and testing, and the full scale final product. Key risks include scale-up of component materials and equipment, systems level thinking, testing at pilot scale in an actual application setting, and final implementation.

Singapore’s Membrane Consortium, SG MEM, was set up to enable partnerships and collaborations towards developing Platform Solutions across our Membrane Ecosystem.  It brings together early stage research from our universities, Singapore’s unique translational facilities, and industry partners from upstream (materials companies), to membrane manufacturers, solution providers and end-users of separations technologies.  This expanding and varied group of companies ranges from start-ups to SMEs, large local enterprises to multinationals.

One of the key institutional members of this ecosystem is the Separation Technologies Applied Research and Translation (START) Centre, Singapore’s national facility for bridging the gap between promising innovations in separations, especially membrane based inventions, at the laboratory scale, and industrial scale products and processes.  Over the past three years, this centre has built up broad capabilities in membrane (both flat-sheet and hollow-fiber) fabrication at industrial scale, the design, construction and testing of elements and modules, and the design of pilot systems for testing in real-life scenarios. 

This talk will showcase two case studies in how we have built the framework to take early stage membrane inventions to commercially viable solutions for key challenges in the fields of Water and Environment.  Examples will include technologies focused on industrial waste-water treatment for re-use, including potential recovery of valuables from the waste stream, and development and piloting of systems for lowering desalination system cost.

One of the biggest challenges for commercialization of novel ideas, even if the Intellectual Property is duly protected, is the gap between laboratory processes, results and testing, and the full scale final product.  Key risks include scale-up of component materials and equipment, systems level thinking, testing at pilot scale in an actual application setting, and final implementation.

Singapore’s Membrane Consortium, SG MEM, was set up to enable partnerships and collaborations towards developing Platform Solutions across our Membrane Ecosystem.  It brings together early stage research from our universities, Singapore’s unique translational facilities, and industry partners from upstream (materials companies), to membrane manufacturers, solution providers and end-users of separations technologies.  This expanding and varied group of companies ranges from start-ups to SMEs, large local enterprises to multinationals.

One of the key institutional members of this ecosystem is the Separation Technologies Applied Research and Translation (START) Centre, Singapore’s national facility for bridging the gap between promising innovations in separations, especially membrane based inventions, at the laboratory scale, and industrial scale products and processes.  Over the past three years, this centre has built up broad capabilities in membrane (both flat-sheet and hollow-fiber) fabrication at industrial scale, the design, construction and testing of elements and modules, and the design of pilot systems for testing in real-life scenarios. 

This talk will showcase two case studies in how we have built the framework to take early stage membrane inventions to commercially viable solutions for key challenges in the fields of Water and Environment.  Examples will include technologies focused on industrial waste-water treatment for re-use, including potential recovery of valuables from the waste stream, and development and piloting of systems for lowering desalination system cost. 

Singapore Membrane Consortium and World-class Research, Dedicated Translation and Test-bedding Capabilities

The Singapore Membrane Consortium (SG MEM) was launched in 2018, and serves as an umbrella platform to integrate, coordinate and expand membrane-based technologies and commercial offerings from Singapore to the world. We are funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Singapore, and our mandate includes connecting existing cutting-edge membrane research and innovation activities (which range from fundamental research to applied and translational research) with industry partners. This is aimed at accelerating the commercialization of membrane technologies that meet industry needs in and beyond water e.g. gas separation and purification, concentration and purification of ingredients/mixtures/solvents in the pharmaceutical and food and beverage sectors, controlled drug delivery systems etc.

Our ecosystem encompasses institutes of higher learning (IHLs), national scale-up and translation centres as well as industry members. We currently have 28 industry members on paid membership, spanning from chemical suppliers, to membrane manufacturers, system integrators, solution providers and end users. We also recently signed partnership agreements with international universities and research centres from the US, Europe, Israel and Australia to explore new research areas for potential collaboration.

About Dr. Adil Dhalla 

Dr Adil Dhalla is Managing Director, Separation Technologies Applied Research and Translation (START) Centre, funded by Singapore’s National Research Foundation, is a national facility for bridging the gap between research innovations and commercial outcomes.  The START Centre’s mandate involves scaling up industrially relevant advanced separation technologies and processes from the various Institutions of Higher Learning and Research Institutes in Singapore, evaluating their efficacy at pilot scale, and commercializing them with industrial partners.  Currently in it’s second phase, the START Centre has also been selected to lead an effort to find cutting-edge technologies with the potential to lower the system cost of seawater desalination, translate as needed to higher Technology Readiness Levels, and set up and operate a demonstration scale Integrated Validation Plant for testing the same at scale.

Dr. Dhalla chairs the steering committee of SG MEM, Singapore’s Membrane Consortium.  SG MEM functions as the umbrella organization coordinating innovation in the field of membranes across Institutions of Higher Learning, Research Institutes, and key Industry players, including polymer companies, membrane manufacturers, integrators, and systems level solution providers, as well as end users from pharma, food and beverage and refining.  

He serves on the Water Technology Advisory Panel for PUB, Singapore’s national water agency, and Environment and Resources Standards Committee (ERSC), Singapore.

Dr Dhalla is also concurrently Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Executive Director, Nanyang Environmental and Water Research Institute (NEWRI) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU).  Ranked among the world’s top water research organisations, NEWRI operates across the spectrum of Research, Innovation and Enterprise, providing a multi- and trans-disciplinary platform for some 250 researchers in the domains of Water, Waste, Wastewater, and the Energy-Water nexus.  

Prior to his current roles, he was the Director of the GE Singapore Water Technology Center at NUS, from April 2010 to July 2015, where his role included leading GE’s technology efforts in Singapore, and liaising with regional government agencies and universities on collaborative efforts relating to technology development.  He was also an Ombudsperson for GE Power and Water, ASEAN.

Before coming to Singapore, he was the Technical Director of the Polymer Science and Technology team, and earlier the Chemistry and Characterization team, at GE’s John F. Welch Technology Center in Bangalore, India. Since joining GE in 2000, he established and led technical centers of excellence in chemistry, materials and process technologies.

After completing his five-year integrated master’s degree in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India, he earned a doctorate in chemistry from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Following a post-doctoral stint at Penn State University, he was a research fellow at the Bristol-Myers Squibb PRI in Princeton, N.J., and a senior manager in the research and technology division of Ciba Specialty Chemicals in Mumbai, India.

With industrial experience spanning twenty nine years, including twenty five years in management roles, his key areas of professional expertise include the leadership and operational management of large, multifunctional teams, strategic planning, R&D in product/process development and commercialization.  He has co-authored more than 20 issued patents (US and EP), more than 30 GE internal reports and several publications in peer-reviewed international journals.

Filed Under: Events

CBC Radio’s The Current Host Matt Galloway (pictured, left) provided a fresh take on contemporary water issues. He discussed challenges facing the southwestern United States such as drought and climate change. NAWI Executive Director Peter Fiske shares how desalination may play an increasing role in solving water-related crisis. The Current is Canada’s most listened-to radio program. Listen to the episode on CBC Radio One and download the full episode transcript.

Filed Under: Multimedia, Podcast

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