LATHAM, N.Y. — The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's (USBR) Desalination and Water Purification Research and Development Program (DWPR) has received proposals from universities, water utilities, private industry and others for a total of up to $1.5 million in funding for desalination and water purification research in the past few months.
The Bureau has provided millions in funding since the program started, advancing desalination technologies with a focus on environmental safety and financial feasibility.
Water Technology caught up with Yuliana Porras, advanced water treatment research coordinator the USBR, to discuss the history of the program, projects it has funded, the program’s goals and successes and why desalination and water reuse are important for the United States.
On technologies the program has funded, Porras says, "One of the biggest technologies that comes to mind is membrane bioreactor technologies for wastewater treatment. We started funding a lot of this work back in 1998, with actually one of our first appropriations that we got under the program. And membrane bioreactor is widely used today in municipal and industrial wastewater treatment. We have plants in the U.S. that are almost all the way up to 10 million gallons per day that they produce and treat with this new technology, at a very reduced footprint from what conventional water treatment used to do for wastewater."
Listen to the rest of our conversation with Porras on our podcast page, here: https://www.watertechonline.com/podcasts.
