NSF Org:	EEC Div Of Engineering Education and Centers
Recipient:	WILLIAM MARSH RICE UNIVERSITY
Initial Amendment Date:	August 5, 2015
Latest Amendment Date:	September 14, 2023
Award Number:	1449500
Award Instrument:	Cooperative Agreement
Program Manager:	Dana L. Denick ddenick@nsf.gov  (703)292-8866 EEC  Div 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:	$34,477,267.00
Funds Obligated to Date:	FY 2015 = $3,250,000.00 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
History of Investigator:	Pedro Alvarez (Principal Investigator) alvarez@rice.edu Paul Westerhoff (Co-Principal Investigator) Menachem Elimelech (Co-Principal Investigator) Naomi Halas (Co-Principal Investigator) Qilin Li (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office:	William Marsh Rice University 6100 MAIN ST Houston TX  US  77005-1827 (713)348-4820
Sponsor Congressional District:	09
Primary Place of Performance:	William Marsh Rice University 6100 Main Street Houston TX  US  77005-1827
Primary Place of Performance Congressional District:	09
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI):	K51LECU1G8N3
Parent UEI:
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, EFRI Research Projects, EDA-Eng Diversity Activities, ENG NNI Special Studies
Primary Program Source:	01002324DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002223DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001516DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001920DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002122DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s):	018Z, 019Z, 090Z, 110E, 112E, 123E, 125E, 127E, 128E, 131E, 1480, 1504, 7237, 7633, 7680
Program Element Code(s):	032y00, 117900, 138500, 144000, 148000, 150400, 576100, 763300, 768000, 768100
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.

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