Abridged SP FINAL-DIGITAL - Flipbook - Page 12
W A T E R -ENER G Y NEX US
I N I T I A TIVE
• Water and energy-use efficiency – Technology
innovations in water resources recovery, green
infrastructure, enhanced water monitoring
techniques, infrastructure resilience, and
performance of small water utilities
• Systems modeling and data analytics – Tools and
models for interdisciplinary decision-making
• Leveraging the water–energy nexus to support our
energy future
Milestones:
Short Term (six months to two years)
10-year goal:
• Demonstrate an integrated system of
nontraditional water treatment and
renewable energy generation sources,
and define the feasibility and optimization
paths for development of full-scale
desalination system(s) with significant cost
reductions.
The Challenge:
• U.S. energy and water systems are often
siloed.
• There is an urgent need to recognize the
interdependency between energy and
water systems, diversify sources, increase
resilience of and between energy and
water systems and transition to more
resilient coupled water–energy systems.
Research Summary:
The initiative will coordinate science and
technology efforts at the intersection of water
and energy by focusing on:
• Novel desalination technologies – Develop
new desalination technologies operating
at cost, electricity, and emission parity with
the average price of municipal water today
• Critical material recovery – Develop
unconventional sources (e.g., brines) for
extraction of critical materials such as Li
and its conversion to high-grade battery
precursor materials (lithium carbonate
and lithium hydroxide)
10 | ETA Strategic Plan 2021-2030
• Identify, initiate, and scale-up fundamental
materials discovery programs, and work toward a
better understanding of the underlying scientific
principles and innovation in materials sciences
that are key for successful development of energyefficient water treatment technologies
• Conduct a life-cycle analysis of urban water delivery
systems and industrial oil/gas water–energy
interdependencies, establish key areas for water–
energy technology advancements, and assess
economic impacts that are essential for effective
use of R&D resources
• Establish meaningful collaboration with industry
partners, and provide technical assistance to
industry partners to advance and improve existing
state-of-the-art water–energy technologies
• Build partnerships and collect data needed to
address key problems in the water–energy space
Medium Term (three to five years)
• Seed one or two novel disruptive technologies in
advanced membranes, capacitive deionization,
ion sorption, and/or electric field separations, and
move breakthrough discoveries into the technology
development phase.
• Demonstrate an integrated system of ion
separation/desalination and renewable energy
generation sources, demonstrate feasibility
and optimization paths for development of fullscale desalination system(s) with significant cost
reductions and deploy models to address these
problems
Long Term (five years and beyond)
• Demonstrate new methods of desalination at half
the cost of the current state-of-the-art technologies
