National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI)

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

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Cost optimization models for emerging water treatment processes benefit from holistic assessment of an entire process, including considerations for pretreatment, which can be costly. Previous optimization models have not accounted for the impact of chemical phenomena that occur during water treatment, such as chemical reactions that occur during pretreatment and mineral scaling in membrane treatment processes.

Mineral scaling—the buildup of minerals in a membrane, affecting its performance—presents a critical challenge to achieving high water recovery rates. As researchers refine desalination designs, they must consider the cost tradeoffs of reducing mineral scaling with desalination processes. Modeling frameworks should account for many variables in addition to mineral scaling as high-recovery treatment trains are optimized.

NAWI researchers Oluwamayowa Amusat, Adam Atia, Tim Barthlomew, and Alexander Dudchenko developed a cost optimization modeling framework for the technoeconomic assessment of desalination systems with mineral scaling and precipitation incorporated. The work—published in ACS ES&T Engineering—details a framework that includes mathematical optimization of complex processes with detailed water chemistry predictions for phenomena like mineral scaling and precipitation.

NAWI’s framework is generalizable and is demonstrated through its application to hypothetical high-recovery treatment trains for brackish and seawater desalination, centered on high-pressure reverse osmosis (HPRO), an emerging technology that shows significant promise for advanced desalination applications. This is the first technoeconomic assessment to incorporate mineral scaling predictions and chemical pretreatment into HPRO optimization. The approach includes a technoeconomic assessment on a conceptual treatment train that includes chemical pretreatment—soda ash softening and recarbonation—and membrane-based desalination in standard and HPRO.

The framework anticipates pretreatment, cost, and operational requirements needed for high recovery desalination that is cost effective and feasible. Results show that the overall cost of treatment is dominated by the soda ash softening process, while a pH control step is needed to control calcium carbonate scaling, which is critical for reaching higher water recoveries in seawater and brackish water treatment. The findings indicate that more research into reducing the cost of scaling control is worthy of further investigation.

The research emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach to optimization design, where pretreatment and primary treatment considerations are incorporated as key elements for cost-optimal operation.

The Water treatment Technoeconomic Assessment Platform (WaterTAP) is NAWI’s flagship modeling and technoeconomic analysis (TEA) software tool. Through the development of WaterTAP, NAWI seeks to help those in the water community perform rigorous TEA of current and novel water treatment unit processes and systems through an integrated modeling and simulation capability. Now we need your help to expand the accessibility and use of WaterTAP.

Whether you are a novice when it comes to WaterTAP or have some experience and wish to deepen your knowledge, we invite you to apply to join the fall cohort of the WaterTAP Academy by June 30, 2025, to learn and enhance your skills in a structured learning environment.

What You’ll Learn and When

In the first cohort of the WaterTAP Academy, participants will learn to use WaterTAP with the goal of applying it to a specific problem or project of their choosing. Participants will be taught in a set of weekly online workshops and lectures by WaterTAP experts, and will also receive one-on-one support during office hours as they develop their project models. The Fall 2025 WaterTAP Learning Cohort takes place over 8 weeks:

  • The first two weeks of November 2025
  • The first two weeks of December 2025
  • All four weeks of January 2026.

Who Should Apply

Applicants from across the water treatment innovation ecosystem are encouraged to apply, including:

  • Consulting engineers who seek to rigorously compare the performance and cost of different variations of advanced water treatment trains;
  • Academic and industrial researchers seeking to evaluate the marginal value of new treatment unit processes in the context of complete treatment trains; and/or
  • Water treatment technology developers seeking to quantify the operational and cost improvements possible with new materials (e.g. membranes) unit processes or treatment trains.
  • WaterTAP Academy participants should have a little experience using Python (though not required) and have general familiarity with water treatment process modeling. Applicants should bring a targeted question or modeling objective relevant to their current work as NAWI experts will work to customize course materials to meet participants’ needs and skill levels.

Questions?

Please reach out to Adam Atia, copying , if you have questions. Learn more about WaterTAP.

Apply today!

Desalination, energy, mining, and semiconductor industries, among others, produce large volumes of brine. To recover water for reuse and reduce the impacts of brine discharge, two approaches are often used: zero liquid discharge (ZLD) and minimal liquid discharge (MLD). ZLD maximizes water recovery and avoids the needs for brine disposal; however, it is expensive and energy intensive. MLD, which reduces the brine volume and recovers some water, has been proposed as a practical and cost-effective alternative to ZLD; however, brine disposal is needed.

Despite the development of novel materials and processes for ZLD during the past decade, several factors hinder the development and adoption of innovative technologies for cost-effective and energy-efficient ZLD and MLD. NAWI researchers Tiezheng Tong, Shihong Lin, Paul Westerhoff, Pei Xu, and others have examined the concepts, technologies, and industrial applications of ZLD and MLD. According to their recently published journal article in Nature Reviews Clean Technology, there is no universally optimal approach for all brine management scenarios—the selection of technologies and engineering design for MLD and ZLD treatment trains can be treated as a constrained optimization problem, with technical and economic parameters and constraints that depend on location and regulations.

Future research will be crucial in reshaping both technical and regulatory constraints, thereby influencing future treatment train designs. Understanding the economic factors and scalability of these technologies is vital for assessing their potential impact on advancing brine management practices. Finally, developing a more comprehensive understanding of how brine disposal impacts surface and subsurface aquatic ecosystems, as well as local geological activity, will be essential for creating regulations that achieve a balance between environmental sustainability and economic feasibility.

To learn more, read the full article in Nature Reviews Clean Technology.

The National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI), which is led by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has been extended for five more years with $75 million in funding from DOE. NAWI will continue its contributions to helping decarbonize the water and wastewater sectors through investments in technologies that enhance the efficient use of energy for water use, treatment, and distribution.  

“Water and energy are interdependent—water is used to produce nearly every major energy source, and energy is critical to transporting and treating water,” said Jeff Marootian, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. “The deep connection between these two resources demands an integrated approach that considers the challenges and opportunities inherent to both sectors. The Department of Energy is proud to be leading the nation’s efforts to decarbonize the water economy, while ensuring a secure water future for communities nationwide.”

Over the next five years, NAWI is shifting its focus to include regional water systems planning – and will partner with water planners at the state and regional level to develop and use new tools for water supply forecasting, water demand forecasting, and water portfolio optimization. NAWI will also spearhead water resilience pilot projects and implement regional water system workshops. These new directions will enable NAWI to continue to accelerate breakthroughs towards a circular water economy, where water is treated to fit-for-purpose standards and reused locally, rather than transporting freshwater long distances. 

“Desalination and innovative water treatment technologies hold great promise for helping us meet our planet’s growing demand for one of our most precious resources: water,” says Mike Witherell, Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “The Department of Energy’s renewed support for NAWI enables the continuation of cutting-edge research and development which is needed to not only treat unconventional sources of water for re-use but to lower their cost and energy use.” 

Over the past five years, NAWI has supported a robust research portfolio with 60 original and innovative research and development projects that span analysis for water-energy grid integration to the development of algorithms, models, and adaptive process controls for resilient operations. In addition, NAWI has supported the implementation of 11 pilot projects that have begun work demonstrating some of these innovative technologies in real-world environments. NAWI has also developed the NAWI Alliance with over 1,670 members, and partnered with over 420 leading industry, academic, and government stakeholders. NAWI has also developed a suite of knowledge products, including a master roadmap and series of industry-specific roadmaps to prioritize the highest impact technology options, and its 60 projects support those priorities. To date, NAWI researchers have published more than 100 articles in high-impact research journals. 

“Our research program remains steadfast in its commitment to reducing the price, energy cost, and greenhouse gas emissions of new water technologies,” said Peter Fiske, Executive Director of NAWI. “Our work also bridges cutting-edge research with real people and places, such as producing secure, reliable, and affordable water for communities that are most in need.”

Throughout the next five years, NAWI will remain committed to the principles of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accountability (IDEA). NAWI’s pilot projects will continue to treat unconventional water sources to provide usable water in real-world environments. Some of the pilot projects will partner directly with communities and groups that have historically been underserved by existing water supplies. 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.

NAWI’s plan for the next five years aligns well with the California’s Water Supply Strategy (WSS) – Adapting to a Hotter Drier Future, which outlines a strategy and priority actions to adapt and protect water supplies from the effects of rising temperatures and drier conditions due to climate change. The California Water Plan is the State’s strategic plan for sustainably and equitably managing and developing water resources for current and future generations. Key actions include enhancing water conservation efforts and accelerating innovation related to water treatment, reuse, and desalination.

“Securing a more resilient water future for California means investing and building meaningful relationships with key partners like NAWI. This collaboration will help drive innovation for new, affordable water supplies for a more water resilient future for generations to come,” said California Department of Water Resources Director Karla Nemith.

The next phase of NAWI also aligns with the California Water Plan Update 2023 (Update 2023), which champions climate resilience throughout various regions and water sectors by offering a comprehensive approach. This approach includes a statewide vision, well-defined goals, a watershed planning framework, a versatile toolkit, and a dashboard for tracking progress indicators.

“Regional water systems planning is critical to addressing questions of where, when, and how non-traditional source waters are most effectively deployed for enhanced U.S. water security,” said Meagan Mauter, Research Director of NAWI. “Regional systems models also help to establish the value of desalination technology innovation, linking the R&D NAWI performs on new nanoscale materials or intensified processes to dollars saved and carbon saved. The balance of our program will continue to advance device and treatment research investments from the first 5 years of NAWI, including a focus on cost effective, energy efficient desalination technologies and advanced data, modeling, and control systems for complete treatment trains.”

The NAWI program will significantly contribute to the implementation of the updated water plan, demonstrating novel methods for water reuse at the community and premise scale, along with further advancing key reuse technologies such as desalination and fit-for-purpose treatment. NAWI will support California and the nation to in their efforts to keep pace with the impacts of climate change, facilitating smarter and swifter updates to its water systems.

“The next five years present an invaluable opportunity to deliver impact aligned with NAWI’s pipe parity metrics and further the country towards net-zero emissions by 2050,” said Fiske.

NAWI will continue to be supported by the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy’s Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office. 

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NAWI is a research program and public-private partnership supported by the United States Department of Energy in partnership with the California Department of Water Resources and the California State Water Resources Control Board. NAWI 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 the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, National Energy Technology Laboratory, and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and funded by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office and Water Power Technologies Office.

Additional information:

NAWI Executive Director Peter Fiske presented during a session titled ‘New Frontiers of the Water-Energy Nexus’ at the 20th Anniversary Water Conservation Showcase on Thursday, June 15, 2023. The session examined the water/energy relationship, reviewed water policy implications, shared several case studies, and explored the concept of distributed water treatment and reuse systems.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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)

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The National Alliance for Water Innovation is proud to announce the release of a Special Issue from ACS ES&T Engineering. The Special Issue presents analysis of the challenges and opportunities posed by a future circular water economy as well as research needs toward decentralized treatment and fit-for-purpose reuse of non-traditional source waters. The issue features Technology Baselines and Innovation Priorities for Water Treatment and Supply Editorial, Reviews, Perspectives, Articles, and Mastheads. Importantly, the NAWI nontraditional water baseline studies were released in this issue of ACS ES&T Engineering. 

What is a baseline, you ask? A baseline is an in-depth assessment of the current state of the art. Pei and her team surveyed several brackish groundwater desalination facilities, inventoried their installed technology, and quantified the cost, energy consumption, reliability, and other relevant pipe parity metrics for various treatment train components. The end result is a comprehensive assessment of today’s brackish water treatment technology that also offers insight into where NAWI’s low technological readiness levels research and development investments might substantially reduce the cost and energy of brackish water treatment and concentrate disposal. 

In addition to Prof. Xu’s brackish water baseline, NAWI researchers have released baseline reports on industrial, municipal, agricultural, mining, and power. A special thanks to Profs. Jaehong Kim and Dionysios (“Dion”) Dionysiou for overseeing the baseline special issue review process in ACS ES&T Engineering. 

We are always hoping to expand our baseline datasets in service of the development and representativeness of our cost and energy analysis tool, WaterTAP. If you are a water treatment facility operator interested in contributing cost and energy data from your facility, please be in touch with the Data, Modeling, and Analysis topic area leads, Jordan Macknick and Jennifer Stokes-Draut via the NAWI Community website.

NAWI has outlined what it will take to achieve water sustainability through innovative water-treatment technology in a master technology roadmap.