Collaborative Research: ECO-CBET: Solar-Driven Zero Liquid Discharge to Enable Inland Desalination for Climate-Adaptive Water Resilience

About This Grant

2420676 (Tong) and 2420677 (Lin). Climate change is threatening water sustainability by causing more droughts and limiting water access to people around the world. For example, the Western United States has suffered from severe droughts and heat waves, and the Colorado River has recently experienced record low water levels. Brackish water desalination (BWD) is a promising approach to produce more freshwater, but it is inhibited by the lack of effective strategies for brine management. The goal of this research is to develop cost- and energy-efficient brine treatment technologies that enable decarbonized BWD for climate-adaptive water supply. This goal is targeted to be achieved through interdisciplinary research that integrates fundamental interfacial processes and thermal transport to achieve a solar driven zero liquid discharge (ZLD) system. The environmental impacts of this system will be evaluated by techno-economic analysis, life-cycle assessment, and assessing public acceptance. Further benefits to society will result from research training of college students from underrepresented groups, curriculum enrichment, and outreach and public engagement activities. The accelerating global effects of climate change have resulted in an immediate need of adapting water supplies to the rapidly intensified drought conditions. The nationwide adoption of BWD as a feasible strategy to augment freshwater supply is hindered by the challenge of brine management. Minimizing brine volume via ZLD is the key to render BWD a practical and viable means to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change on water security and resiliency. The overarching goal of this project is to achieve solar driven ZLD for decarbonized inland freshwater production as part of a strategy to address climate change. Specific objectives of the project are to 1) develop a novel process integrating nanofiltration and reverse osmosis to enable cost-effective brine volume reduction; 2) design an innovative interface enhanced crystallizer for energy-efficient and robust brine crystallization, guided by fundamental understanding of interfacial salt crystallization, 3) develop a novel high-efficiency heat pump to power ZLD with interface enhanced crystallizer; and 4) evaluate the sustainability of off-grid, decarbonized inland BWD with ZLD with concurrent techno-economic, lifecycle, carbon flow, and social acceptance assessments. To achieve these objectives, this project will integrate and converge knowledge and approaches from multiple disciplines including environmental engineering, environmental sustainability, interfacial engineering, thermal transport processes, systems engineering, and social science. The successful completion of this project has the potential for transformative impact through enabling decarbonized ZLD to support the wide adoption of climate-resilient inland desalination that improves water resilience against a changing climate. The project will provide undergraduate and graduate students from underrepresented groups with opportunities of preforming interdisciplinary, convergent research to solve an environmental and sustainability challenge of global concern. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.