Cooperative Agreement R21AC10512

This $250,000 National Science Foundation project grant, funded under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041), supports the development of a solar evaporator-based, high-efficiency water desalination system. Northeastern University will work to optimize an all-in-one solar evaporator using a novel design of a planar, interconnected open-pore copper-copper oxide foam structure. This is intended to provide a cost-effective (4.5 kg/sqm/hr) desalination solution driven directly by solar irradiation. A...

This $500,000 Project Grant award from the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) under CFDA 81.135 will support the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in developing a highly energy-efficient desalination system using solar thermal energy and multi-stage distillation. The key innovation is a phase change process at the liquid-solid-vapor interface to efficiently transport and utilize energy, which aims to significantly reduce energy consumption compared to industrial...

This $100,000 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program will support the development of passive solar desalination technology for produced water from oil and gas extraction sites. The Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station will modify existing solar evaporation ponds using hierarchical nanstructured hydrogel materials to increase evaporation rates and superhydrophobic coatings to enhance water droplet departure on glass...

The National Science Foundation awarded a $256,000 Project Grant to Solmem LLC through the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships federal grant program (CFDA 47.084) to support the SBIR PHASE I: LOW-COST HIGH-EFFICIENCY SOLAR DESALINATION project. The grant, awarded April 1, 2021 with a completion date of September 30, 2022, will fund the development of products and services focused on advancing science and engineering research and innovation leading to breakthrough technologies as well as...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) Project Grant award of $274,994 supports the development of an innovative, membrane-free, and chemical-free desalination technology based on ion concentration polarization. The goal is to create a scalable system that can effectively transition from a bench-scale production capacity of 10 liters per hour to a larger-scale capacity of 1,000 liters per hour. This advancement aims to make desalination more...

This Cooperative Agreement award from the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation, under the Water Desalination Research and Development Program (CFDA 15.506), aims to demonstrate a continuous pilot photobioreactor operation using sunlight to remove scaling compounds from reverse osmosis concentrate. The project team at Texas State University has developed a new photobiological process that utilizes brackish diatoms and natural sunlight to remove scalants such as silica, phosphate,...

North Carolina State University (NC State) was awarded a $452,293 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CFDA 47.041 - Engineering) to develop improved distillation membranes for saltwater desalination. The grant aims to design and produce highly porous, thin membrane materials that can efficiently desalinate seawater using low-grade heat sources, such as industrial waste heat or solar energy. The...

This $550,000 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) to the University of Colorado (CU) will investigate an innovative pressure-driven distillation process for water purification that can produce safe, high-quality water using significantly less energy than conventional heat-driven distillation. The key innovation is the use of pressure instead of heat to distill water, with the potential to reduce energy use by a factor of ten. The...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant award under CFDA 47.041 Engineering program provides $1,235,696 to Arizona State University (ASU) to develop cost- and energy-efficient brine treatment technologies that enable decarbonized brackish water desalination (BWD) for climate-adaptive water supply. The 4-year project aims to: 1) create a novel nanofiltration and reverse osmosis process to reduce brine volume; 2) design an innovative interface-enhanced crystallizer for...

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy awarded a $999,523 Cooperative Agreement to Purdue University on October 1, 2025 to develop a wave-powered, pumpless seawater desalination system. This project is funded under the Renewable Energy Research and Development program (CFDA 81.087), which supports research and development of clean energy technologies to reduce costs, improve performance, and accelerate the commercial viability of renewable energy...