Dear Colleagues,
The National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) Exchange is a 5-year, $110M research program supported by the U.S. Department of Energy in partnership with the California Department of Water Resources, the California State Water Resources Control Board, and numerous industry and academic partners. NAWI is headquartered at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). It was co-founded by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). NAWI envisions an affordable, energy-efficient, and resilient water supply for the U.S. economy through decentralized, small-scale, fit-for-purpose desalination.
The NAWI Pilot Program RFP is seeking proposals from teams to design, build, test, and/or operate small-scale desalination/water reuse treatment systems that treat a “non-traditional” or impaired (and presently economically unusable) water to standards necessary for an identified beneficial use. The overarching goal of this Pilot Program is to field and operate a set of water treatment systems in realistic operating environments to accelerate the development of commercial, small-scale treatment systems that can produce water at pipe-parity from various non-traditional water sources.
For the purposes of the Pilot Program, NAWI defines non-traditional waters to be brackish water; seawater; produced and extracted water; and power sector, industrial, municipal, and agricultural wastewaters. Small-scale desalination systems are defined as systems that treat less than 1 million gallons per day. Although NAWI is not requiring a minimum pilot-scale system flow rate or system size, the maximum flow rate or system size must not exceed 50 gallons per minute. Furthermore, the proposed system size must be justified in the context of the proposed application and, results from pilot-scale systems should be translatable to small-scale desalination systems that would be implemented in the field.
NAWI anticipates projects' total federal cost to be around $500,000 over a duration of 24 months. However, there is no maximum federal funding limit. Budgets should reflect the proposed work scope. A minimum of 35% cost-share for each project is required.
Concept Paper responses are due by 5:00 pm PT on Wednesday, June 29, 2022.
For more information and to apply, please visit: https://nawi.infoready4.com/#competitionDetail/1868427
Thank you.
Kathleen Nolan, Director, ANR Office of Contracts & Grants (OCG)