Research
Funded Research
NMSU receives grant for Water Security Program
The Institute for Energy and the Environment (IEE) through New Mexico State University’s College of Engineering (COE) and the Water Resources Research Institute (WRRI) has been awarded a $929,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) as part of the NMSU Water Security Program (Desalination).
The proposed research and development project in partnership with General Electric (GE) Water and Process Technologies is anticipated to create significant knowledge that will lead to improvements in current desalination processes and reduced costs. The project will make use of the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility (BGNDRF), located in the Tularosa Basin, in Alamogordo, NM. The basin has extensive brackish and saline water resources: within a five-mile radius, water ranges in salinity from 2,000 to over 100,000 parts per million (PPM) total dissolved solids.
NMSU in partnership with GE researchers will conduct applied research using a nonstandard 7-GPM desalination research and development system constructed by GE that will allow modification of components for experimenting with parameters. Reduction in the overall cost of product water will be realized in part through advancements in device and materials technologies. These include operation-cost reductions through power electronics modifications, which may enable both reduced power consumption and capital equipment costs.