Deadline: 09-Sep-21
The Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Research and Development Office is pleased to announce the 2022 Desalination and Water Purification Research Program (DWPR).
Objectives
DWPR’s goal is to increase water supplies by reducing the cost, energy consumption, and environmental impacts of treating impaired and otherwise unusable waters.
This DWPR funding opportunity invites applicants to address any of the following objectives.
- Reduce energy consumption and lower the cost of desalination
- Reduce the environmental impacts of seawater desalination and develop technology and strategies to minimize those impacts
- Improve existing membrane technologies, including reverse osmosis
- Carry out basic and applied research on next generation desalination technologies, including improved energy recovery systems and renewable energy-powered desalination systems that could significantly reduce desalination costs
- Develop and promote innovative desalination technologies, including concentrate management and chloride control
- Study methods for the recovery of byproducts resulting from desalination to offset the costs of treatment and to reduce environmental impacts from those byproducts
- Develop metrics to analyze the costs and benefits of desalination relative to other sources of water (including costs and benefits related to associated infrastructure, energy use, environmental impacts, and diversification of water supplies)
- Assess environmental impacts from desalination intake, concentrate management approaches, and reclaimed water
- Develop improved intake methods at coastal facilities to minimize impingement of larger organisms and entrainment of smaller ones
- Improve pretreatment for membrane desalination
- Improve membrane system performance
- Develop novel approaches or processes to desalinate water in a way that reduces primary energy use
- Develop cost-effective approaches for concentrate management that minimize potential environmental impacts
- Develop a better understanding of the formation of hazardous transformation products during water treatment for reuse and ways to minimize or remove them
- Develop a better understanding of pathogen removal efficiencies and the variability of performance in various unit processes and multibarrier treatment and develop ways to optimize these processes
- Identify better indicators and surrogates to monitor process performance in reuse scenarios and develop online real-time or near real-time analytical monitoring techniques for their measurement
Funding Information
- The President’s fiscal year (FY) 2022 budget request includes $7.85 million for research under the DWPR program. Reclamation anticipates awarding approximately 10 to 20 projects dependent upon available Federal appropriations.
- Applications submitted under this NOFO also may be considered if additional funding becomes available in FY 2022 or thereafter.
- Award Ceiling: $800,000
Eligibility Criteria
Any responsible research entity is eligible to receive an award under this NOFO, including:
- Individuals
- Institutions of higher education
- Profit organizations
- Private entities
- State and local governmental entities
- Entities that are an administrator of a federally funded research and development center
- Tribal governments and organizations
- Non-profit organizations
For more information, visit https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=334596