National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI)

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

Water

When David Warsinger talks about water, it’s never just about water.

It’s about thermodynamics, membranes, microbes, minerals, agriculture, geopolitics — and the quiet urgency of building systems that actually work in the real world.

Now a faculty member at Purdue University, David’s path to leading one of NAWI’s most ambitious desalination pilot projects began years earlier in an MIT conference room, crowded around a whiteboard with . What started as a “side project” during his PhD has since evolved into patented technology, multiple partnerships with startups, international research momentum — and, most recently, NAWI support to build the largest true-batch seawater reverse osmosis (RO) system ever developed.

Rethinking Desalination at Its Core

Conventional reverse osmosis desalination operates continuously: water flows in, pressure stays high, and energy is often wasted by overpressurizing the system. David and his collaborators questioned a foundational assumption — what if desalination didn’t have to be continuous at all?

Instead, they explored batch and semi-batch reverse osmosis, where pressure changes dynamically over time to closely follow the minimum pressure required to desalinate water. This subtle shift turns out to matter a lot.

But there was a catch. A true batch system requires precise, simultaneous control of both pressure and volume — something that hadn’t been solved before at scale. Through persistent whiteboard brainstorming and years of iteration, David and cracked the problem, leading to patented configurations that laid the groundwork for today’s pilot systems.

NAWI Support Enables a First-of-Its-Kind Pilot

With support from NAWI, David’s team at Purdue, Colorado School of Mines, and Oak Ridge National Lab set out to do something bold: build the largest true-batch RO pilot system in the world.

Housed on a 25-foot trailer and operating up to 40–50 gallons per minute , the system is anything but small. The membrane vessels are roughly 10 feet long, the valves are “about the size of a person’s head,” and the main pump and motor weigh nearly 180  pounds. What began as a proposal for a 10-gallon-per-minute system grew — with NAWI’s encouragement and additional resources from collaborator Tzahi Cath’s Department of Defense project — into a five-times-larger, fully modular pilot platform.

The system is designed to compare multiple desalination modes side-by-side: continuous RO, semi-batch RO, true batch RO, and other emerging configurations. It can test seawater, brackish water, high-salinity brines, and even difficult industrial and agricultural wastewaters — making it a flexible testbed for next-generation water treatment.

Beyond Energy: Scaling, and Recovery

Energy efficiency is only part of the story.

Because batch RO cycles salinity up and down every few minutes, it naturally disrupts biofilm formation, a major cause of membrane failure in conventional systems. The rapid salinity changes can cause microbial cells to swell and burst — a phenomenon David’s team has been studying in detail.

Batch operation also opens the door to higher water recovery. Traditional desalination systems avoid operating near salt saturation to prevent scaling and crystallization, which can permanently foul membranes. But batch RO can safely pass through supersaturated conditions for short periods, allowing operators to extract more water from the same feed — an especially valuable advantage for brines, groundwater, and mineral-rich streams.

Applications: Who Benefits First?

While municipal utilities tend to be slow adopters of new technology, David sees near-term impact in industry — particularly sectors that already handle difficult waters.

Critical minerals like lithium and iodine often come from salty brines that are currently concentrated using massive evaporation ponds. Batch RO could dramatically reduce land use, energy demand, and environmental impact in these processes. Agricultural wastewater, industrial reuse, and high-recovery treatment for PFAS and other emerging contaminants are also strong candidates.

Some of this impact is already happening. Variations of David’s batch-inspired designs have been adopted by startups treating animal wastewaters and agricultural flows — with systems now operating at over one million gallons per day.

Scaling Science in a Challenging Funding Landscape

Building hardware-intensive systems on accelerated timelines isn’t easy — especially in today’s uncertain research funding environment. David is candid about the challenges: short pilot timelines, the difficulty of sustaining graduate student support, and the broader consequences of delayed or canceled federal funding.

Yet the urgency only reinforces the stakes.

Water security, critical minerals, agricultural resilience, and energy efficiency are deeply interconnected. Technologies that improve desalination efficiency and recovery don’t just make water cheaper — they help secure food systems, reduce geopolitical vulnerabilities, and protect ecosystems from salinization.

Training the Next Generation

Beyond the technology itself, David is deeply invested in people. His lab has trained an unusually large number of graduate students for an early-career faculty member, many of whom have gone on to faculty roles, startups, and leadership positions in water research.

He also leads outreach efforts with K–12 students, coaches intercollegiate water and marine energy teams, and believes strongly that early exposure to water science shapes future careers.

“If people understand water early,” he says, “they care about it differently.”

Looking Ahead

With NAWI’s support, David’s team is pushing batch reverse osmosis beyond proof-of-concept toward commercialization-ready scale. The goal is simple — and ambitious:

To make desalination and water reuse less energy-intensive, more resilient, and more capable of handling the waters we can no longer afford to ignore.

What began as a whiteboard exercise is now rolling on a trailer, valves humming, membranes cycling — quietly redefining what’s possible in water treatment.

The National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) NextGen Program supports the development of early-career NAWI researchers and members of the alliance to help build a domestic workforce capable of driving future research and development in the water energy sector. Early-career NAWI-affiliated scientists, including graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career staff members are encouraged to join the program!

A recent article in the Chemical Engineering Journal details a study of how electromagnetic field (EMF) technology can reduce mineral scaling in water treatment systems and why results vary across applications. Mineral deposits such as calcium carbonate, gypsum, and silica—often called scale—can coat pipes, heat exchangers, and membranes, reducing efficiency, blocking flow, and increasing maintenance and cleaning demands. Conventional chemical antiscalants can be effective but raise concerns about handling, cost, waste, and the long-term complexity of continuous dosing and system monitoring.

The study by NAWI researchers Pei Xu, Xuewei Du, Huiyao Wang, Yanxing Wang, Fangjun Shu, Lawrence  Anovitz, Ke Yuan, and others, shows that EMF treatment can reduce scaling by influencing both minerals suspended in water and crystals growing on surfaces. Bench tests on heat-exchanger and membrane-distillation systems showed fouling dropped by 15–79%, while pilot and field studies in reverse osmosis systems saw scaling fall by 40–45%. EMF effectiveness is highly dependent on water chemistry, system configuration, and operating conditions, which helps explain why some systems see strong results and others see less benefit.

EMF works through two main mechanisms: homogeneous nucleation in the bulk solution and heterogeneous crystal growth on surfaces. The study also explores how EMF strength, frequency, waveform, and flow velocity affect outcomes. By combining pilot-scale experiments and modeling simulations, the study shows how adjusting these parameters can optimize performance for different water treatment setups.

EMF systems operate without chemicals, produce no secondary waste, and require minimal energy. Case studies in cooling towers and reverse osmosis systems show reduced cleaning downtime, energy savings, and longer water reuse before blowdown or discharge. The study notes that hybrid approaches, combining EMF with low-dose antiscalants, may further improve reliability and cost-effectiveness, but systematic testing is needed to confirm performance and compatibility.

The authors conclude that EMF shows real potential for chemical-free scale control, but its effectiveness depends on a clear understanding of how it affects mineral behavior in water and how deposits attach to surfaces. Although long-term, full-scale validation and standardized testing protocols are still needed, the study sheds light on the mechanisms and operational factors that drive performance. By clarifying how EMF interacts with different water chemistries and system conditions, the study highlights the circumstances under which EMF could provide a reliable, cost-effective approach to reducing mineral scaling in a range of water systems.

Exploring how tiny chemical structures can tackle big environmental challenges, from PFAS contamination to resource recovery.

What makes a material truly effective—and how can those insights spark the next generation of solutions? That’s the question NAWI researcher Ethan Pezoulas and his team are answering by moving beyond material design to uncover the principles that drive performance.

For Ethan, an interest in water started long before graduate school—shaped by years spent outdoors in Alberta, Canada. “I grew up hiking, camping, skiing, and playing hockey,” he says. “I was surrounded by rivers, lakes, and snow-fed streams. You can’t spend that much time outdoors and not start thinking about how vital water is—and how we manage it.”

After earning his BSc in Chemistry from the University of Calgary, Ethan moved to Berkeley to join the Jeff Long research group at UC Berkeley. Now in his fifth year of a  Chemistry PhD program, he reflects: “I’ve been loving it.” His academic path was driven by curiosity and a desire to bridge two worlds—fundamental chemistry and real-world impact. “I like knowing the fundamental chemistry, but what’s most satisfying is applying it to real-world problems,” he says.

That mindset defines Ethan’s work today. “The overarching theme of my research is developing porous materials for aqueous separations of environmental and economic importance,” he explains. In simple terms, Ethan creates tiny structures with chemical ‘hooks’ that latch onto specific substances. He then builds these into porous materials—like advanced sponges—that can pull certain contaminants out of water while letting everything else pass through.

Within his NAWI project, Ethan is tackling two major challenges: removing selenium and PFAS from water. PFAS—often called “forever chemicals”—are persistent, harmful substances found in nearly every water source on the planet. Selenium, while essential in trace amounts, can be toxic at higher concentrations and is a growing concern in wastewater from agriculture and industry.

Ethan’s materials work by selectively binding these contaminants, pulling them from water while leaving behind what’s safe. And here’s the breakthrough: by studying why these chemical modifications work so well, Ethan and his team discovered design principles that can be applied beyond their current system.

“In theory, you could take what we learned about the chemical modifications and apply it to different frameworks or different sponges that might be better suited for other applications,” Ethan explains.

That insight turns a single innovation into a platform for many—enabling next-generation adsorbents that could address a wide range of water challenges.

For Ethan, this isn’t just academic achievement; it’s part of a bigger vision. “I want to keep doing research for direct application—taking what we know and applying it to real-world solutions,” he says. While he values fundamental science, his passion lies in innovation that makes a difference. “It’s satisfying to know the principles behind something, but the real excitement comes when you can see it making an impact.”

The National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) played a pivotal role in this journey. Beyond funding, NAWI provided clarity on priorities, access to resources, and a network of collaborators. “NAWI gave us direction and connected us with a community. Those conversations and partnerships have been just as important as the research itself,” Ethan notes.

Outside of NAWI, Ethan is exploring how to recover critical minerals—such as precious metals or rare earth elements—from the chemical solutions left over after recycling electronics, magnets, and batteries. “Instead of mining raw materials, which can be environmentally destructive, we can recover critical elements from existing waste streams,” he says. This not only supports sustainability but also strengthens supply chains for clean energy technologies.

As he looks ahead, Ethan is leaning toward industry—where fundamental research can become products that change how water is treated worldwide. His work is a reminder that understanding the science behind performance isn’t just academic—it’s the key to unlocking cleaner, safer, and more sustainable water technologies for the future.

The National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) NextGen Program supports the development of early-career NAWI researchers and members of the alliance to help build a domestic workforce capable of driving future research and development in the water energy sector. Early-career NAWI-affiliated scientists, including graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career staff members are encouraged to join the program!

Hannah Holmes’s journey from a small town in southern Illinois to the research labs at Stanford University was driven by curiosity and a passion for making science meaningful, especially for communities like the one where she grew up.

Raised in a town of just 4,000 residents, she had little early exposure to science. That changed in high school when a chemistry class sparked her curiosity. Her interest grew after shadowing a female chemical engineer at the oil refinery where her father worked. Inspired by the field’s use of science and math to solve real-world problems, she went on to study chemical engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Hannah’s academic path has spanned several scientific areas, all of which have focused on pollutant removal and reuse. At the University of Illinois, she worked on electrochemical processes that transform carbon dioxide into fuels and chemicals. During her Ph.D. studies at Georgia Tech, her research centered on carbon capture from air or flue gas. After a post-seminar conversation with Stanford’s Will Tarpeh, she shifted her focus to water-based separations, leading to her current role as a postdoctoral researcher in his lab.

At Stanford, she is developing electrochemical processes to recover nutrients from wastewater. Her work involves building low-impact systems to recover critical nutrients like phosphate, an essential component of agricultural fertilizers. After fertilizer application, excess nutrients carried by irrigation or rainfall to lakes and reservoirs can cause large algae blooms, which harm both the environment and human health. A key project uses a hybrid electrochemical ion exchange process to recover phosphate as fertilizer through electrochemical regeneration, a lower-carbon, more cost-effective alternative to conventional chemical methods. She explains, “By recovering phosphate as fertilizer, we can close the loop and transform pollutants back into valuable products.”

What sets her research apart is its multi-scale approach. One day she might analyze molecular-level adsorption mechanisms with synchrotron tools; the next, evaluate broader impacts through technoeconomic and life cycle analysis. This range allows her to approach each challenge from both molecular and systems-level perspectives. She notes that while adsorbent and electrochemical processes have been scaled independently, integrating them shows great promise. “There’s a path forward for integrated systems,” she says.

Her interest in environmental technologies is rooted in a pivotal undergraduate lecture on the disproportionate effects of climate change on rural areas. “I wanted to use my chemical engineering background to help places like my hometown,” she recalls.

Looking ahead, Hannah hopes to expand her work to other pollutants—both gaseous and aqueous—and envisions “refineries of the future” that turn waste into valuable products using scalable, energy-efficient technologies. But she acknowledges that technical innovation alone is not enough. “We still need buy-in from funders and treatment facilities,” she says, citing the inertia and limited incentives that can slow real-world adoption.

Although her work is highly technical, Hannah emphasizes the human side of science. She values in-person interactions—especially at conferences—for building authentic, lasting relationships. As a member of the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) NextGen Leadership Committee, Hannah recently helped lead a mixer during the NAWI quarterly review meeting to encourage interaction and collaboration among graduate students, postdocs, and early-career water researchers.

Mentorship plays a central role in Hannah’s life. As an undergraduate, she was placed in a program for students considered less likely to succeed. That experience, and the support it provided, helped define her approach to science and mentoring. “Everything I’ve accomplished is because mentors positively influenced the trajectory of my life, and I would love to provide that same support for others,” she says. “Mentoring students and seeing them advance on their own paths is one of my proudest achievements.”

In fall 2025, she will lead the mentorship program for the NAWI NextGen Leadership Committee. She is eager to involve mentees in the process and help early-career researchers connect and grow. As part of the program last year, Hannah advised Ph.D. students on maximizing productivity, finding early-career positions, and achieving a healthy work-life balance. As for the latter, she shares straightforward advice for Ph.D. students: “Take breaks, get outside, and stay proactive about communication with your mentor and collaborators.”

Outside the lab, Hannah enjoys walking around campus, spending time in nature, and playing with her cat, Friday. During the final year of her Ph.D., a visit to Climeworks’ direct air capture facility in Switzerland reminded her that the technologies she works on aren’t just theoretical—they are already being deployed. The site, one of the world’s first commercial-scale direct air capture plants, used modular units to extract carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere for storage or reuse.

As she prepares to apply for faculty positions in chemical engineering, she stays focused on what initially drew her to science—curiosity and a desire to make a difference—along with what has sustained her commitment: mentoring the next generation of scientists and engineers.

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 Research Director Meagan Mauter and NAWI Deputy Topic Area Lead for Materials and Manufacturing Jeff McCutcheon authored an article for Science that highlights why materials discovery alone has not translated into lower-cost water treatment. The publication emphasizes that the enduring dominance of traditional reverse osmosis membranes reveals a broader need within the water treatment community to reassess the innovation pipeline for membranes for desalination and water treatment. Read the article.

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.