Published on IDRA Global Connections Spring 2020 Issue

• Mr. Daniel R Simmons, Assistant Secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy,
  speaks with IDRA Secretary General about the role desalination technologies will play over the next 20 years in meeting the growing, global need for safe, dependable, affordable water resources. Additionally, he discusses the key water technology issues that the U.S. Department of Energy is committed to solving.

1). What are the key water technology issues that the DOE is committed to solving (drivers behind the Energy-Water Desalination Hub)?

Our energy and water systems are interdependent. Huge amounts of energy are required to extract, treat, and deliver water. Water is used in multiple phases of energy production and electricity generation, from hydraulic fracturing to irrigation to the cooling of thermoelectric power plants. In some cases, water and energy systems directly overlap, as with hydroelectric plants that also store municipal water supplies. Disruptions to one system can directly affect the other. For example, water shortages can force power plants offline, electric outages can cause major disruptions at water-treatment facilities, and aging impoundments and water-conveyance infrastructure can limit both energy and water
delivery. The good news is this dynamic cuts both ways: we can use energy innovation to solve water problems and water innovation to solve energy problems. DOE is leading the Water Security Grand Challenge because we see opportunities to improve efficiency, resiliency, and environmental performance at the energy-water nexus.

When it comes to water technologies, we want to make water and wastewater treatment processes less energy intensive. We believe water treatment facilities could even be transformed into net producers of energy, as well as useful nutrients and chemicals. To achieve this, we are looking at how we can recover energy from the organics in wastewater, make more efficient use of waste heat, recover nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, and use alternative and renewable energy sources for water treatment.

Another challenge is matching various sources of water to various sources of demand. The water needs of the utility, oil and gas, manufacturing, mining, and agricultural sectors are all different. If we can find ways to more efficiently match traditional and nontraditional
water sources with fit-for-purpose treatment, use, and reuse, we can reduce the energy intensity, environmental impact, and cost of our water system.

These were some of the main drivers behind DOE’s Energy-Water Desalination Hub, led by the National Alliance for Water Innovations (NAWI). The Hub is an earlystage R&D consortium with the national laboratories, universities, industry, nonprofits, and other key stakeholders. The Hub
is dedicated to developing technologies that treat nontraditional sources of water, such as seawater, brackish groundwater, and produced water, to meet municipal, industrial, agricultural, utility, oil and gas, and other needs. The “moonshot” goal is to develop low-cost, energy-efficient desalination technologies that produce water at “pipe parity” with traditional water sources and reduce the environmental impact for 90% of non-traditional water sources within the next 10 years.

2). Desalination is a broad term. Traditionally, it has been associated mostly with treating seawater for potable use. Today, it includes the treatment of seawater, municipal wastewater, as well as a growing issue of saline and hypersaline brines from industry. Can you comment on how the DOE segments desalination and your general approach to each?

DOE has announced several funding opportunities and prizes that incentivize the development of desalination technologies from as many angles as possible. These include:

• The American-Made Challenges: Solar Desalination Prize is a multi-stage prize competition designed to accelerate the development of low-cost desalination systems that use solar-thermal power to produce clean drinking water from salt water. Current standard technologies, like
  reverse osmosis, are efficient when salt concentrations are low, but can’t handle high-salt waters like those produced from oil and gas wells, concentrated brines, and some industrial and agricultural wastewaters. Novel thermal desalination technologies can purify water with very
  high salt content without dramatically increasing the amount of energy required. By using solar thermal as the energy source, desalination technologies could be used in a variety of environments, especially in arid, sunny places. Millions of dollars will be awarded to competitors who advance through several stages of the competition, culminating in a $1 million grand prize for the successful testing and demonstration of
  promising solar desalination prototypes.
• The Waves to Water Prize accelerates the development of desalination systems that can provide clean drinking water in disaster recovery situations using only waves as a power source. DOE will award up to $2.5 million to help winners advance their ideas from an initial concept to open-water testing.
• The National Alliance for Water Innovations (NAWI) is leading the aforementioned Energy-Water Desalination Hub, a planned $100 million dollar consortium focused on early-stage R&D for energy-efficient and cost-competitive desalination technologies, including addressing the manufacturing challenges associated with commercializing new technologies. The scope of the Hub’s R&D for treatment of water sources is
  broad. It includes seawater, brackish water, industrial waste water, municipal waste water, agricultural waste water, mining waste water, utility/cooling water, and produced waters. The Hub will conduct early stage R&D to treat these diverse water sources for a variety of fit-for-purpose end uses – whether it’s municipal, industrial, agricultural, or for energy production and extraction, such as oil and gas production or thermoelectric cooling, or to serve other water resource needs. Achieving “pipe-parity” for these non-traditional water sources will only be
  possible if we think beyond improvements to unit process efficiency and large-scale water treatment and delivery systems. This is why NAWI will pursue distributed small, modular desalination systems and water use enabled by Autonomous, Precise, Resilient, Process-Intensified, Modular and Electrified (A-PRIME) water treatment technologies.
• The Nuclear Energy Consolidated Innovative Nuclear Research Funding Opportunity Announcement promotes innovative technologies that improve the performance of nuclear power. One topic is integrated nuclear-renewable energy systems that help meet the global need for safe, secure, and affordable water.
• The Solar Desalination Funding Program develops technologies that use solar thermal energy to create freshwater from otherwise unusable waters. Thermal desalination has the potential to increase water supplies for municipalities and agriculture, and can purify water produced by various industrial processes, including oil and gas production.

3). On June 21, 1961, President Kennedy, upon activating by remote control from the Fish Room of the White House the saline water conversion plant at Freeport, Texas, stated, “Today is an important step to the achievement of one of man’s oldest dreams, securing freshwater from saltwater… this is one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of history, and I am sure before this decade is out, we will see more and more evidence of man’s ability, at an economic rate, to secure freshwater from saltwater, and when that day comes, then we will literally see the deserts bloom.” Yet, still today, the energy cost of desalination impedes the solutions it provides from being available to more people in need of freshwater. Under your leadership, how has the U.S. Department of Energy addressed the economic rate of energy for desalination?

High cost of these systems is the major barrier to greater adoption of U.S. desalination technologies. Environmental issues, such as brine management and disposal, also pose a challenge, but the required energy load for desalination is a key driver of the high costs. Purifying seawater to drinking water standards can be 10 times more energyintensive than treating freshwater to the same standards.

That is why technologies that promote costeffective desalination are a major focus of the Water Security Grand Challenge. Using a coordinated suite of prizes, early-stage research and development, and other programs, the Grand Challenge has set the following goals for the United States to reach by 2030:

• Launch desalination technologies that deliver cost-competitive clean water.
• Transform the energy sector’s produced water from a waste to a resource.
• Achieve near-zero water impact for new thermoelectric power plants, and significantly lower freshwater use intensity within the existing fleet.
• Double resource recovery from municipal wastewater.
• Develop small, modular energy-water systems for urban, rural, tribal, national security, and disaster response settings.

DOE’s largest-ever investment in water security and affordability is the $100 million Energy-Water Desalination Hub. The Hub just kicked off operations in February 2020, and in its first year has developed several R&D “roadmaps” that will be made available to the public. These roadmaps identify research topics that will have the greatest impact on the cost of desalination technologies. The roadmaps will inform a call for proposals that DOE expects to issue this summer. The Hub will also introduce a public data portal called, “Water TAPS and Water DAMS,” that allows researchers to share their results and use modeling and analysis tools, such as technoeconomic assessment and life-cycle analysis,
to measure their progress against state-of-theart technologies. We hope researchers will use these tools to accelerate our progress toward
cost-competitive desalination technologies.

4). What is DOE’s position on the energy and environmental footprint of desalination and the role the technology plays to meet growing global needs for safe, dependable and economic water sources over the next 20 years?

Desalination is one example of why we need vast amounts of affordable and clean energy. We recognize that the energy footprint of desalination is indeed large. The environmental footprint of brine management can also be a challenge. For this reason, we have numerous research pathways aimed at improving desalination and the associated environmental impacts.

We are committed to advancing technology and innovation to meet the global need for safe, secure and affordable water. Our goal is to use a number of funding opportunities including prize competitions to drive technological innovation in critical water issues. Additionally, leveraging partnerships with other government agencies will accelerate R&D of cost-competitive technologies and spur new markets at the nexus of energy and water.

Energy and water are fundamental elements of modern life that are largely taken for granted. Challenges to infrastructure puts the reliable delivery of water and power to farms, families, and businesses at risk. That is why President Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum on Promoting the Reliable Supply and Delivery of Water in the West. The Memorandum recognizes the critical role infrastructure plays in delivering water and power in an efficient, cost‑effective way.

5). In September, DOE launched the National Alliance for Water Innovation to lead an Energy-Water Desalination Hub that will address water-security issues in the United States. Please share your views on the role DOE plays in funding and sparking new technology to secure energy and water innovation. Are prize competitions and $100 million investments enough or should more be done?

It’s true that we are allocating $100 million to NAWI and coordinating a host of funding opportunities, prizes, and competitions through the Water Security Grand Challenge, but that is not all we’re doing. DOE is exploring partnerships with external stakeholders that are launching or could launch their own prizes and initiatives under the Grand Challenge. DOE envisions the Grand Challenge evolving over time to encompass a wider set of perspectives and issues while still striving toward manageable-but-ambitious goals.

Prizes can also serve as opportunities for technology validation, offering assurances to the risk-averse water sector. Potential partners
inside and outside the government have discussed a range of contributions, including investments in DOE prize competitions, launching theirW own prize competitions, refining or expanding the Grand Challenge’s goals, and providing test facilities. As the Challenge matures, DOE expects to expand its collaboration with outside partners.

We’re also looking to expand our collaboration within DOE and across the federal government in areas such as irrigation modernization.

Congress recently directed the Department’s Advanced Manufacturing Office to fund a $20 million water/wastewater treatment initiative,
leveraging alternative energy sources where appropriate. This R&D will complement the work being done in the Desalination Hub.

6). The United States is now the No. 1 energy producer in the world. One of the outcomes of this is the need for a plan to address the
growing amount of water produced from oil and gas wells. Can you comment on how DOE views this issue and how DOE will promote reuse within and outside of the oil and gas industry?

The best way to promote reuse is to find affordable and environmentally sound methods for water treatment and disposal. This falls within the scope of the DOE-NAWI Energy-Water Desalination Hub. In its first year of operations, the Hub will develop several “source water” roadmaps that identify research priorities. These include R&D, analysis, and modeling for technologies that could promote reuse within and outside the
oil and gas industry. As I mentioned, NAWI will also develop public data and modeling tools called “WATER TAPs” and “WATER DAMs” that will provide a public platform for data usage and exchange, as well as access to modeling tools. DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy is working on
technologies for processing produced water to remove impurities and valuable minerals and leave behind clean water.