| NSF Org: |
EEC Division of Engineering Education and Centers |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 5, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | July 9, 2025 |
| Award Number: | 1449500 |
| Award Instrument: | Cooperative Agreement |
| Program Manager: |
Dana L. Denick
ddenick@nsf.gov (703)292-8866 EEC Division of Engineering Education and Centers ENG Directorate for Engineering |
| Start Date: | August 1, 2015 |
| End Date: | July 31, 2025 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $18,500,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $36,183,088.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2016 = $3,500,000.00 FY 2017 = $3,790,083.00 FY 2018 = $4,240,379.00 FY 2019 = $4,141,069.00 FY 2020 = $6,307,577.00 FY 2021 = $3,850,229.00 FY 2022 = $2,455,989.00 FY 2023 = $2,941,941.00 FY 2024 = $1,705,820.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
6100 MAIN ST Houston TX US 77005-1827 (713)348-4820 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
6100 Main Street Houston TX US 77005-1827 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
Eddie Bernice Johnson INCLUDES, Nanoscale Interactions Program, SSA-Special Studies & Analysis, EnvE-Environmental Engineering, ERC-Eng Research Centers, GOALI-Grnt Opp Acad Lia wIndus, IUCRC-Indust-Univ Coop Res Ctr, EDA-Eng Diversity Activities, EFRI Research Projects, ENG NNI Special Studies |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001920DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002425DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002122DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002324DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001516DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.041 |
ABSTRACT
Title: A Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment.
Access to safe drinking water is a basic need for all life on the planet. It is a grand challenge linked to public health, energy production, and sustainable development. This is not just a need in the developing world. Over 40 million Americans are not connected to a municipal water system and rely on the quality of the water available from wells. The quality of this water varies with location and climate change exacerbates fresh water scarcity. The technologies that result from the research of this center will broaden access to clean drinking water with a variety of potential sources (e.g. groundwater from wells, salt water, brackish water, or recycled industrial water). The modular systems that will be designed will address drinking water from the scale of a household, to a neighborhood to a remote town. These technologies will also find application to help people get drinking water during natural disasters. In addition to drinking water, the Center will improve the water "footprint" of oil and gas exploration and production operations by helping to increase the quality of water cleanup for reuse and recycle. The environmental impact of water use in these industrial settings will be improved, saving energy and water resources. Students trained in this Center will have a multidisciplinary, team-based research experience with the skills needed to translate their research to a broad set of stakeholders (e.g., industrial organizations, governmental organizations, and citizens) that lack a secure source of clean water.
The ERC is led by Rice University, with partners at Arizona State University, University of Texas-El Paso and Yale University. The Center's use of nanotechnology will allow the design and manufacture of multifunctional nanomaterials to adsorb a wide variety of pollutants including oxo-anions, total dissolved solids, nitrates, salts, organics, foulants, scalants, viruses and microbes. These nanomaterials will be immobilized in membranes that are packaged into system modules. The use of modules offers flexibility of targeted pollutant(s) and end-use application capacity or scale of delivered water rate. Novel photonic, electronic, catalytic, and magnetic engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) will introduce new approaches to transform water treatment from a large, chemical- and energy-intensive process toward compact physical and catalytic systems. These innovations will benefit multiple stakeholders, from rural communities and locations hit by natural disasters to hydraulic fracturing oil and gas sites, where reuse of produced waters minimizes regional environmental impacts. The Center's innovative technologies are founded on rigorous basic research. Component technologies include fouling-resistant, high-permeability membranes that use ENMs for surface self-cleaning and biofilm control; capacitive deionization with highly conductive and selective electrodes to remove scalants (divalent ions); rapid magnetic separation of paramagnetic nanosorbents for easy reuse; nanophotonics-enabled direct solar membrane distillation for low-energy desalination; disinfection and advanced oxidation/reduction using nanocatalysts; and template-assisted nanocrystallization for scaling control. Fundamental research on ENM interactions with water pollutants and substrate materials; integrated unit processes that immobilize, support, or recover ENMs; and safety by design demonstrated in testbeds will ensure that the Center's systems are resilient, economical, and highly efficient.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Transforming Water Security through Nanotechnology: Outcomes of the NEWT Engineering Research Center
Overview: Access to clean water remains a critical challenge worldwide, particularly in remote areas and during emergencies. The Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT), an NSF funded Engineering Research Center (ERC), addressed this global issue through groundbreaking research and the development of modular, nanotechnology-driven water treatment systems. Over ten years the NEWT partnership – including Rice University, Arizona State University, The University of Texas at El Paso, and Yale University – successfully developed innovate technologies and educated an expansive workforce to prepare for ending global water security challenges.
Outcomes and Findings:
Intellectual Merit: NEWT has advanced fundamental nano-scale science and developed modular technologies that enable fit-for-purpose treatment of nonconventional sources (e.g., industrial wastewater) over the course of a decade. NEWT provides alternatives to large, chemical- and energy-intensive centralized water treatment processes (which are inaccessible in remote locations or some sprawling urban areas) toward compact physical and catalytic systems that are easy to deploy and exploited unique nano-scale phenomena to enhance treatment capacity and cost-efficiency. NEWT’s innovations in advanced materials and modular treatment systems enhanced versatility to respond to changes in source water characteristics or treatment objectives. Early-phase discoveries (TRL 1-2) have advanced nano-enabled adsorption, photonic, catalytic, electronic and superparamagnetic multi-functional processes to achieve selective removal of toxic pollutants (e.g., arsenic, selenium, nitrate and perfluorinated compounds). NEWT also enabled low-cost desalination using photonic and porous ENMs, as well as removal of foulants from water using selective electrosorption or core-shell magnetic separation processes. Three NEWT testbeds, focused on drinking water, oil and gas, and produced water treatment, were built and operated to advance NEWT technologies. NEWT has made significant contributions to fundamental knowledge, engineered systems enabling technologies, engineered systems, and workforce development related to water quality engineering. Through its collaborative, cross-disciplinary, and multi-university approach to safely use nanotechnology, the Center has facilitated major advances in decentralized (fit-for-purpose) water treatment and reuse, electro/photo hydrogen-based catalytic degradation and membrane-based separations.
Broader Impacts: NEWT developed a globally competitive workforce and a dynamic innovation ecosystem to enhance water security; a critical aim to protect public health and enable economic development. NEWT’s two private and two large public universities shared strategies and collaborated to improve educational reach to K-12 students and science teachers, and integrated multi-institutional research philosophies and approaches to develop a unique and synergistic NEWT culture. NEWT’s education logic model provided an assessable structure to set the center’s pedagogical outcomes. The humanitarian nature of providing safe water emerged as a common drive that united NEWT members, and provided avenues to communicate the need for advanced technologies and recruit top students into the field. Through highly collaborative research projects and experienced innovators (including NAE/NAS members and Clarke Prize laureates), NEWT provided diverse mentorship opportunities to junior faculty, postdocs and graduate students, as well as possibilities for engagement in numerous outreach activities.
Industry and Community Engagement: NEWT fostered a dynamic innovation ecosystem, resulting in multiple spin-off companies commercializing NEWT technologies, bridging laboratory research with real-world applications. NEWT informed significant municipal investments, notably a $300 million upgrade to Tempe’s water infrastructure addressed contaminants Tempe’s water infrastructure addressing contaminants. In addition, the ERC collaborated with NSF international to establish critical standards for safe nanotechnology application in water treatment.
Workforce Development: NEWT engaged over 16,000 students and teachers through educational initiatives like the NEWT NanoAcademies and the NanoEnvironmental Engineering for Teachers (NEET) programs, significantly boosting STEM education.
International Collaboration: NEWT led global partnerships and knowledge exchange programs with international entities like the Gates Foundation and the United Nations addressing pressing global water issues
Legacy and Sustainability: NEWT evolved into the self-sustaining NEWT Alliance, a consortium dedicated to advancing water research and development through diversified funding sources and robust institutional support. The technologies and partnerships developed by NEWT promise enduring impacts on global water security, sustainability, and public health.
Impact: NEWT fostered a highly multidisciplinary, collaborative, and diverse research team, establishing a vigorous innovation ecosystem with extensive industry partnerships. Enhanced interactions across research areas facilitated significant advancements, driven by strategic planning and high-impact priorities informed by industry needs. Utilizing the NABC value proposition approach ensured research alignment with critical water security challenges. NEWT concluded with over 900 published works and the creation of 40 new faculty now leading initiative worldwide. The center attracted substantial financial resources, including $96 million in associated projects in its final year alone. Notably, achievements such as solar-powered desalination, membrane distillation advancements, catalytic treatment for PFAS and nitrate reduction, along with innovative nano-adsorbent technologies have significantly influenced water treatment practices and policies. NEWT’s high-impact research, published in leading journals line Nature Nanotechnology and Science, not only advanced fundamental science but provided practical solutions addressing real-world environmental and public health challenges, setting new benchmarks for efficiency, safety and suitability in global water management.
Last Modified: 06/05/2025
Modified by: Pedro J Alvarez
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