New Master Roadmap Guides Industries To Invest in Low-Cost, Low-Energy Ways To Treat Salt Water & Recycle Wastewater
Agriculture accounts for about 90% of total water consumption in the western United States and around 80% in the rest of the country.
This year, droughts, ferocious wildfires, and extreme heat waves are turning farmlands dusty and ranchlands into grass stubble too short to feed livestock. Without adequate water supplies, farmers and ranchers are suffering, facing unprecedented restrictions on water supplies they have relied on for decades.
But even without historic droughts, growing demand for clean water will create shortages — and soon. Water managers in 40 U.S. states expect some portion of their community to experience shortfalls by 2024. But there is a solution waiting in runoff drains, farmlands, and even the ocean.
As water insecurity grows and populations continue to increase, the country could tap unconventional sources, like salt water and wastewater, for agriculture (including irrigation and animal management), thermoelectric cooling, mining, oil and gas extraction, industrial and manufacturing processes, care for city parks and cemeteries, and even drinking water.
Still, technological, economic, social, and cultural barriers staunch the flow of a circular water economy — where water can be recycled again and again. That is why the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) just published a master roadmap to help guide future national (and international) technology investments that will not only help keep crops watered and livestock well-fed but also make sure no one goes thirsty when devastating droughts sap our water supplies.
The U.S. Department of Energy formed NAWI in 2019 to accelerate the development of energy-efficient desalination technologies, which extract salts and other impurities from both salt water and wastewater. Their goal is for such devices to produce clean water with the same (or higher) quality as current water treatment methods for 90% of nontraditional resources within the next 10 years. Led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, the NAWI collaboration includes the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the National Energy Technology Laboratory, and more than 250 industry and academic partners.
Waste not. Growing demand for clean water will create shortages—and soon. Now, the National Alliance for Water Innovation’s new Master Technology Roadmap can guide industries to invest in the most promising technologies, so we can recycle salt water, wastewater, and other waste products again and again. Photo courtesy of the National Alliance for Water Innovation.
The master roadmap synthesizes the results of the 2020 NAWI Roadmapping initiative, which focused on technical challenges across five sectors: power, resource extraction (mining and oil and gas exploration and production), industrial, municipal, and agriculture. Though NAWI previously published individual roadmaps tailored to each industry, the master roadmap compiles research opportunities that span more than one industry and could speed the transition to a circular water economy.
“Sector-specific roadmaps gave us almost 90 different things we could focus on,” said Jordan Macknick, NREL’s lead energy-water-land analyst and NAWI’s topic-area lead for data, modeling, and analysis. “There’s no amount of money in the world that can address all those in one project in one coherent way.”
The master roadmap distills those 90 options into a smaller list of those with the greatest impact potential. One of those areas is cost.
Desalination devices that filter contaminants out of salt water or wastewater are not cheap. “We’re currently using these very big bulk separation technologies, like reverse osmosis, which use a lot of energy and are also very expensive, to remove trace contaminants,” Macknick said. “It’s almost like you’re using a sledgehammer to put a tack in a bulletin board.”
He and the broader NAWI team are researching ways to extract contaminants faster, cheaper, and smarter. For example, bulk separation technologies are not necessary to extract microscopic contaminants, like selenium or boron. Smaller, more precise technologies could perform the same job for less money and energy input.
Their goal is something called pipe parity. In Denver, Colorado, for example, if traditional water sources run out, what happens then? The city could pump water over the mountains, but that method gets expensive fast. If the NAWI team can design technology that makes recycled water the cheapest back-up option, that is a win.
But cost is not the only barrier.
“The traditionally conservative water industry is understandably risk averse,” Macknick said. “In general, that’s a good thing for our health. But it also makes the pace of innovation more challenging.” To incentivize the water industry to incorporate nontraditional water sources into their current infrastructure, Macknick and the cross-institutional team need to bring the costs down but also ensure the science is “bulletproof,” Macknick said.
And the water industry is not the only group that needs some convincing. Some consumers still balk at the idea of drinking recycled water.
“There’s a major perception issue when we talk about recycling or reusing water that, somehow, it’s not clean enough or as pure as the water we might get from a river and treat, when in fact, we’re oftentimes treating it to a higher standard than the water that we might pull directly from a river,” Macknick said.
Changing perceptions might take time, but, in the meantime, NREL can help speed the development of more efficient, cost-effective technologies that edge recycled water closer to widespread use. No single technologic breakthrough will get the job done; water treatment often uses a dozen different processes strung together. But with NREL’s deep knowledge of systems analysis, the laboratory’s researchers can analyze these processes as a whole and determine which changes might have the biggest impact.
NREL also previously led the development of an analytical tool called the Water Technoeconomic Assessment Pipe-Parity Platform (Water-TAP3), which evaluates water technology costs, energy use, environmental impacts, and resiliency trade-offs. NREL researchers also developed a data repository called the Water Data Analysis and Management System (Water DAMS), a national go-to for water technology and treatment data. And the laboratory does not just collect and analyze data. NREL’s advanced manufacturing researchers can help design entirely new materials to extract contaminants with greater speed and reduced cost.
NAWI’s new master roadmap will help guide future research at NREL and beyond. “The master roadmap is what is guiding our future investments,” Macknick said. “As the field advances, not only in the United States and with NAWI but also internationally, we want it to be a living document that changes as the sector advances and adapts.”
New technology, developed with guidance from the NAWI master roadmap, could allow farmers to reuse wastewater and even some of its extracted contaminants — phosphorous and nitrogen — as fertilizer. As climate change incites more droughts, wildfires, and extreme heat waves, farmers and ranchers could stay afloat with unconventional water sources.
Despite its name, wastewater need not be wasted.
Article courtesy of NREL.
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Hyundai Motors is recalling 145,235 EVs and other “electrified” vehicles in the US, citing concerns about a loss of driving power, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Friday.
The NHTSA announced this morning that the recall affects selected IONIQ 5 and IONIQ 6 EVs, as well as certain luxury Genesis models, including the GV60, GV70, and G80 electrified variants, from the 2022-2025 model years, Reuters reported.
It looks like the issue stems from “the integrated charging control units in these vehicles, which may become damaged and fail to charge the 12-volt battery. This malfunction could lead to a complete loss of drive power, posing safety risks for drivers,” the NHTSA stated.
If you’re an owner of one of these Hyundai models dating 2022-2025, stay tuned. Hyundai has not yet provided a timeline as to when affected vehicles will be repaired.
To make that happen, the company’s dealers will inspect and replace the charging unit and its fuse if necessary, NHTSA said. Free of charge, of course.
Importantly, no crashes, injuries, fatalities, or fires due to this issue have been reported in the US, Hyundai reported.
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Tesla announced that ‘Actually Smart Summon,’ its autonomous driving feature that enables moving its vehicles without anyone inside over short distances, is now being launched in Europe and the Middle East.
The automaker’s Full Self-Driving suite of features has been limited in those markets due to regulations and Tesla’s focus on making them work in North America first.
Actually Smart Summon is the vision-only version of Tesla’s “smart summon” feature, which was released years ago on Tesla vehicles with ultrasonic sensors.
When Tesla transitioned away from ultrasonic sensors, Smart Summon was one of the missing features that Tesla had yet to adapt to the vision-only (cameras and neural nets) system.
CEO Elon Musk said that it would be coming in 2022, but it finally came only a few months ago, in 2024.
However, that’s only in North America where Tesla focuses its Full Self-Driving (FSD) development, the feature package that includes Actually Smart Summon, also referred to as ‘ASS’.
Most of Tesla’s other markets, including Europe, don’t have the same capabilities under the Full Self-Driving package. That’s partly due to regulations, but Tesla also focuses on making the features work on North American roads first.
Now, Tesla has announced that its Actually Smart Summon feature is launching in Europe and the Middle East:
The feature can only be used on private roads, like parking lots and driveways. Most people have used it to bring their vehicles parked in a large parking lot to them as they exit a store or restaurant. However, the vehicle moves quite slowly under the feature and the owner needs to keep an eye on it at all time and be ready to cancel the summon as Tesla doesn’t take any responsibility for accidents caused by using Actually Smart Summon., like all other FSD features.
Therefore, most people I know who have the feature, myself included, tried once or try to see or impress some friends who have never seen a car move without anyone inside and then stopped using it.
The feature’s main useful use-case is for people with extremely tight parking spots. It enables them to exit the vehicle before it is in its final parking spot and then move the car in and out remotely.
However, that has been the case for years with the regular Smart Summon, as you generally don’t need the vehicle to handle complex parking lots. You mostly need it to move a few feet forward or backward.
But a recent update has broken this feature for some people. We recently reported on a very unfortunate situation that resulted in a Tesla owner having to get out of his car through his trunk.
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US Automakers are planning to ask Mr. Trump to retain President Biden’s EPA exhaust rules, in the face of signs that Mr. Trump might try to reverse them. If the rules are reversed, it would cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of deaths per year.
Interestingly, this is the opposite of what big auto did the last time a reality TV show came to the White House – signaling that they have perhaps learned their lesson this time ’round.
First, some history.
In the middle of the 20th century, the effects of human activity on the atmosphere became readily apparent. Certain cities – with Los Angeles among the forefront – were choked by smog, and it was soon found out that vehicle pollution was the primary reason for this smog.
Since Los Angeles was one of the most smog-choked cities, California led the way on clean air regulation, creating the California Air Resources Board in 1967 (under then-Governor Ronald Reagan).
The federal government gave California special dispensation to set stricter regulations than the rest of the country, in recognition that it had a unique smog problem in its primary metropolis. California has retained this dispensation, in the form of a “waiver,” since then. And other states can follow California’s rules, but only if they copy all of the rules exactly.
Thus, there have been two separate sets of clean air regulation in this country since then – the federal rules, and then the “CARB states” which follow California’s rules.
In 2012 that finally changed, when President Obama’s EPA negotiated with California to finally harmonize these standards and also implement higher fuel efficiency nationwide. This would have been a huge boon for both industry and consumers, saving money and giving regulatory certainty to the auto industry.
But then, in 2016, the candidate who got the 2nd most votes in the presidential election was headed for the White House. And automakers responded by immediately lobbying to torpedo these standards, even before inauguration.
Now, you might think that asking a profoundly ignorant individual, who ended up staffing the EPA with bought-and-sold science deniers (huh, that would never happen again would it?), to change rules which had already been set through years of negotiation and lobbying was not a great idea. And you’d be right.
Not long after automakers had the dumb idea to ask an idiot to fix something that wasn’t broken, that idiot went and broke things further, fracturing the agreement between California and the federal government and ensuring less regulatory certainty for automakers.
After realizing their blunder (which they could have avoided by, y’know, thinking at all about it beforehand), big auto relented and asked the government to please not implement the rollbacks automakers had asked for. Some companies even forged their own agreement with California.
But it was too late, and we are now back in the era of disparate regulatory regimes – something which John Bozzella, head of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (formerly called Global Automakers), keeps complaining about these days, despite having lobbied for exactly this in the first place.
The US EPA and California are still not fully harmonized, but both released recent new standards which do have somewhat similar targets. If a manufacturer builds towards one set of rules, they’ll probably not be too far off from meeting the other.
So in the end, we did get better emissions regulations and California has continued to push forward with clean air regulations, thus signaling a failure on the part of Mr. Trump to cause the long term harm to Americans that he and his oil industry solicitors so desperately seem to desire.
The most recent EPA standards, finalized in March (after being softened at the auto industry’s request), do not mandate any particular powertrain, but rather require steep emissions cuts – and EVs are the easiest way to achieve lower emissions.
Notably, Tesla lobbied in favor of making this last set of standards stronger, and they also lobbied against ruining the Obama/CA standards in 2016 – being one of very few automakers who were on the correct side of that discussion.
Despite that the President Biden EPA’s rules do not mandate any particular powertrain, Mr. Trump, in his usual ignorance, has said that he will end the nonexistent EV mandate. And now that he has received more votes than his opponent for the first time (after three tries, and despite committing treason in 2021 for which there is a clear legal remedy), it looks like the upcoming EPA might be directed to end these emissions cuts and fuel/health cost savings for Americans.
But in this instance, it sounds like the automakers might actually do the right thing for once, and ask the government not to do any rollbacks, and instead let them continue on with the plans without disruption from a convicted felon who seems determined to cede a US EV manufacturing boom back to China.
Detroit’s Big Three automakers – GM, Ford and Stellantis – are all reportedly trying to figure out how to ensure that these rules stay in place. The mentality is that constantly changing regulations are not beneficial for companies – particularly in the auto realm, where models take on the order of 7 years to plan and execute. Long-term planning is important for the hundreds of billions in manufacturing investment that EVs have attracted in the US during Biden’s EV push.
These attitudes are notable, given that this is not what automakers did in 2016/2017. That time, they compulsively pushed for fewer regulations, and now they are asking for regulations to remain in place.
It’s further notable that Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose company lobbied strongly in favor of emissions cuts and makes more use of the federal EV tax credit than any other company, is now allied with the very entity that’s looking to harm EVs. It seems that we have entered opposite world.
So it remains to be seen where we will go from here – on the one hand, doctors, nurses, scientists, environmental groups, many businesses, people who recognize that they have lungs which they would like to continue using, and so on, generally support the strongest regulation possible. Now, automakers have been added to the pile asking for strong regulations.
On the other hand, a former reality TV host – tagged along with by the CEO of the company that has sold more electric cars than any other – seem determined to kill electric cars, despite the harm that would cause to Americans’ pocketbooks and health insurance premiums. And that famously vindictive character may be even more spurred towards this harmful course of action after failing in his efforts the first time.
Who ya got?
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