The Bureau of Reclamation announced that 30 projects will receive $5.1 million from the Desalination and Water Purification Research Program to develop improved and inexpensive ways to desalinate and treat impaired water.
“We are awarding grants to a diverse group of projects to reduce the cost, energy consumption and environmental impacts of treating impaired or otherwise unusable water for local communities across the country,” said Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman. “This funding is a direct result of the Trump Administration’s commitment to increase water supply and delivery through improved technology.” Twenty-five awards are for laboratory-scale projects, which are typically bench scale studies involving small flow rates. They are used to determine the viability of a novel process, new materials or process modifications. Awards are limited to $150,000.
Five projects are selected as pilot-scale proposals, which test a novel process at a sufficiently large-scale to determine the technical, practical and economic viability of the process. Awards are limited to $400,000 and no more than $200,000 per year.
Types of projects funded include modeling, testing new materials such as nanomaterials, and improvements on known technologies such as distillation and electrodialysis. Projects are funded in the following states:
| Alabama | Florida | Massachusetts | Oklahoma |
| Arizona | Georgia | New Jersey | Texas |
| California | Hawaii | New Mexico | Pennsylvania |
| Colorado | Illinois | New York | Virginia |
More detail on each project is available at www.usbr.gov/research/dwpr.
