National Water Reuse Action Plan Completed Action Action 4.6 Implement and Manage the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) Energy-water Desalination Hub (April 2022)


Action 4.6 Implement and Manage the National Alliance for Water
Innovation (NAWI) Energy-Water Desalination Hub

National Water Reuse Action Plan
Completed Action

N.

Background

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) established
an Energy-Water Desalination Hub (Hub) as part of a family
of Energy Innovation Hubs to address water security issues
in the United States. The Hub represents a five-year, $110
million investment by DOE in early-stage applied research
involving U.S. universities, industry, and national labs. The
Hub focuses on research and development (R&D) for

Action Team

Action Leaders
¦ U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)

- Mark Philbrick

(mark.philbrick@ee.doe.gov)

National Alliance for Water

Innovation (NAWI)

energy-efficient and cost-competitive desalination

- Peter Fiske
(pfiske@lbl.Qov')

technologies including manufacturing challenges, and for
treating non-traditional water sources for multiple end-use
applications.

- Meagan Mauter

(mauter@stanford.edu')

Energy and water systems are interconnected. Energy is

required to extract, treat, and deliver water. On the other hand, water

is used in multiple phases of energy production and electricity generation, from

irrigating crops for biofuels to providing cooling water for thermoelectric power plants.

Purifying water for these processes can be energy intensive and becomes more difficult as levels of

saline increase.

The strategic goal for the Hub is to conduct early-stage research on technology solutions to develop new water
sources that are cost-competitive with existing water sources and end-use applications ("pipe parity"). The Hub
uses several performance metrics and analysis tools to measure and assess its impacts.

DOE selected the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) to lead the Hub through a competitive funding
opportunity process. The ongoing five-year research program is guided by an iterative road-mapping process
designed to engage stakeholders from the water-treatment and water-use ecosystem and inform future funding
opportunity announcements to solicit research ideas through a competitive, peer-reviewed evaluation and selection
process. The NAWI team identified six challenge areas (called APRIME) for distributed water desalination and reuse
that should motivate the research agenda for the Hub. These ARPIME challenge areas are Autonomous water,
Precision separations, Resilient treatment and transport, Intensified brine management, Modular membrane
systems, and Electrified treatment processes.

NAWI released a Master Road map in August 2021, which guides NAWI investments that could have
transformative impacts on desalination in five end-use sectors that are critical to the U.S. economy, collectively
known as PRIMA: Power, Resource Extraction, Industry, Municipal, and Agriculture. In addition to the Master
Roadmap, NAWI developed individual PRIMA roadmaps that focus on the role of the five end-use sectors, provide
an overview of each end-use sector, outline key technical challenges and associated knowledge gaps, and detail
the research priorities and areas of interest that span early-stage research through deployment. The Master
Roadmap and five PRIMA roadmaps (power, resource extraction, industrial, municipal, and agriculture') provide
baseline analyses to support the research priorities of NAWI.

NAWI has defined and tracked progress towards achieving pipe parity in the highest impact areas by creating a

Accomplish merits/Impact

National Water Reuse Action Plan

Completed Action
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central, strategic, and integrated data and analysis platform that aligns research across all topic areas with the
Water Data and Analysis Management Systems (WaterDAMS) and Water Technoeconomic Assessment Pipe-Paritv
Platform (Water-TAP) tools.

The Water DAMS software provides access to foundational water treatment technology data that enable
researchers and decision-makers to identify and quantify opportunities for technology innovations to reduce the
cost and energy intensity of desalination. It is the submission point for all data generated by research conducted
by the NAWI Alliance and is designed to be used by the broader water research community.

The WaterTAP is an analytically robust modeling tool that can be used to evaluate water technology cost, energy,
environmental, and resiliency tradeoffs across different water sources, sectors, and scales. The model simulates
steady-state water treatment train performance and costs including flow and constituent mass balance across unit
processes, based on source water conditions, configurations of treatment technologies, and system-level techno-
economic assumptions.

In addition to the development and release of the WaterDAMS and WaterTAP tools, NAWI has awarded more
than $50 million to date to develop desalination and water treatment technologies to secure affordable and
energy-efficient water supplies. The awards were focused on the following key topic areas:

¦	Intensified brine management technologies to bring freshwater supplies to communities across the nation
($5 million);

¦	Innovative desalination technologies that can treat non-traditional water sources (e.g.. brackish water,
seawater. and industrial wastewater) and shrink the carbon footprint of the water treatment industry
($17.7 million);

¦	Automation and creation of smart water systems and precision separations ($9.47 million);

¦	Pilot systems that design, build, operate, and test desalination and water reuse treatment systems that
produce clean water from non-traditional water sources ($5 million); and

¦	Advanced pre-treatment. reverse osmosis concentrate treatment, brine valorization and grid-responsive
desalination systems ($9 million)

Lessons Learned

NAWI identified and discussed challenges and knowledge gaps associated with desalination and advanced water
treatment through its effort to develop the Master Roadmap. The Master Roadmap divides the challenges and
knowledge gaps into two categories: technical challenges and non-technical challenges. Technical challenges
include infrastructure integration, system variability, and residual management issues, and are the primary focus
of NAWI's research to promote the use of non-traditional water. Non-technical challenges, including social
challenges, regulatory challenges, and environmental challenges, are not the primary focus of NAWI; however,
non-technical issues are important considerations in efforts to create desalination and advanced water treatment
technologies. NAWI's subsequent research investments have spawned a range of breakthroughs in desalination
including new membranes for ultrahigh pressure reverse osmosis, advanced electocoagulation technologies that
remove turbidity and can remove contaminants such as viruses and arsenic, and novel methods to reduce the
formation of biofilms in reverse osmosis systems. The funded areas listed above represent the most impactful
development opportunities that will ultimately motivate subsequent industry investments required to further
enable the use of non-traditional water sources in a cost-effective manner.

The interconnection of the WaterDAMS and WaterTAP informs comprehensive calculations of technology
performance and pipe-parity metrics. With publicly accessible contributions from a variety of academic industrial
partners, WaterDAMS enables data discoverability, improves accessibility, and accelerates collaboration that
contributes to pipe parity and innovation in water treatment technologies. The results obtained from Water TAP3
can help identify trade-offs among system performance metrics, with insight on how particular technologies or
systems promote pipe-parity. The flexibility and comprehensive scope of the tools make them promising solutions
to industry-wide water technoeconomic evaluations, leading to more informed water investment decisions and
technologies.

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Completed Action
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Action Implementation Process

Announce awards of
funding opportunity on
autonomous water and
precision separations.

Announce awards for funding
opportunity on desalination
. and water reuse treatment
k systems that produce clean
3 water from non-traditional
W water sources.

Potential Future Activity

NAWI's Master Roadmap is intended to guide future R&D investments throughout the duration of the research
program. NAWI will update its roadmap periodically and encourages stakeholders to provide feedback on the
forward-looking Master Roadmap via the NAWI website. In successive roadmap iterations, the feedback will be
used to assess the relevance of each research priority and evaluate progress toward enabling a water circular
economy, while considering all relevant pipe-parity metrics.

NAWI will continue to provide funding opportunities for universities, industry, and national labs to advance
NAWI's strategic goals of improving the energy efficiency of water treatment technologies and the diversification
of water supply through the cost-effective utilization of non-traditional water sources across the United States.
The technology advancements developed by the NAWI research program are geared to help domestic suppliers of
water desalination systems to design and manufacture critical equipment, components, and small-modular and
large-scale systems.

NAWI has the potential to be renewed for a second 5-year term starting in 2025. This second phase of the NAWI
program would further develop and refine key water treatment technologies and field novel desalination and
water reuse systems in field pilots around the U.S.

Additional Resources

Press Release: Department of Energy Announces $100 Million Energy-Water Desalination Hub to Provide
Secure and Affordable Water

Press Release: Department of Energy Selects National Alliance for Water Innovation to Lead Energy-
Water Desalination Hub

National Alliance of Water Innovation (NAWI) website

Launch the NAWI
Energy-Water
Desalination Hub

Publicly release initial
drafts of five water use
roadmaps and one
master roadmap
synthesizing the
individual roadmaps

Release an initial
version of the
Water DAMS tool
to the public to
provide access to
water treatment
data.

Release an initial version
of the Water-TAP3 tool
to the public to facilitate
the assessment of
treatment trains.

Announce the funding
opportunity project
selections for innovations
in intensified brine
management.

National Water Reuse Action Plan

Completed Action
Action 4.6

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