Discover our research

The NEWT Testbeds provide our project teams feedback to improve performance and data to the safety and sustainability team to refine techno-economic analyses. Testbeds support our industrial partners via sponsored projects and serve NEWT’s educational and outreach goals.
Naomi Fuentes

Core Testbeds

Testbed

Location(s)

Focus

MobileNEWT

ASU

Drinking water with oxo-anion focus

NEWTSkid

Rice

Desalination focused on O&G produced water

DesaliNEWT*

UTEP*

Desalination of brackish groundwater and direct potable reuse of municipal wastewater

Humanitarian

Yale, UTEP*, ASU*

Solar Disinfection

NEWT-Accesible Testbeds

IPAB Partnership Testbed & Location

Water Focus & Sponser

Carbon block testbed

Ida, MI

NSF Certification challenge waters

Amway

Wastewater reuse

Scottsdale, AZ

El Paso, TX

Tertiary wastewater for Direct potable reuse

Nanotechnology Enabled Water Design Lab

(NEWDL)

Houston, TX

Pretreatment, desalination

DOW/WHI

Forward Osmosis (FO) system

Houston, TX

Salinity / O&G produced water

RTI

Applied Research Center

Boise, ID

Drinking & wastewater

Carollo Eng

Meet our team

MobileNEWT

MobileN

The MobileNEWT is an enclosed dual-axle trailer-based testbed, where nanomaterial integrated modular water treatment devices are designed, developed, and tested for drinking water application. It provides a platform to assess these technologies’ operational feasibility at the field settings and for extended operational periods. NEWT industrial partner collaborates with the MobileNEWT team to support field research and translate these technologies to real-world use. 

  • MobileNEWT provides feedback to help NEWT researchers to address fundamental questions, operational issues, and learn to design resilient water treatment systems
  • It is fully equipped & operated with various operational and WQ sensors – for remote monitoring & assessment 
  • It demonstrates the operational feasibility of integrated, modular, nano-based water treatment technology at field setting and can compare them against other technologies already in the marketplace 
  • MobileNEWT team can also deploy an individual module to any location in assessing nano-based treatment to meet the industry’s needs & challenges 
  • MobileNEWT team would like to find opportunities to collaborate with NEWT industry partners to explore nano-based treatment as a cost-effective & sustainable technology to meet the industry’s immediate & future needs  

It also provides support to public education and acceptance of nanotechnology in water treatment. 

NEWTSkid


NEWTSkid provides an off-grid, mobile platform for collaborations involving evaluation and testing of new industrial water treatment technologies.  This unique testbed is a skid-mounted, completely solar-powered, pilot-scale industrial wastewater treatment system with a maximum treatment capacity of 5 L/min.  NEWTSkid can include pre- and post-treatment modifications and can be further adapted to integrate a range of advanced, modular water treatment units.

  • Implement remote monitoring and automatic control
  • Assess performance of NEWT’s selective electrodes and electrocatalysts;
  • Technology transfer of NESMD (nanophotonics-enabled solar membrane distillation) technology (EDRC, KAAU, Localized Water Solutions, Solmem)
  • Evaluation testbed potential of more NEWT technologies (e.g., Active fouling control and Trap-and-zap electrodes)

DesaliNEWT

DesaliNEWT END

  • Electro-Nano Diffusion (END) desalination pilot from NEWT partner
    MI-Systems
  • Long-term energy-competitive desalination of real brackish water
  • Modeling multi-ionic transport

DesaliNEWT DPR

  • Photovoltaic & Thermal (PVT) desal pilot unit
  • Patented synergy from warming brackish feed and cooling panels
  • Seeking industry collaborator for high-temp desalination

DesaliNEWT DPR

  • High-recovery
    zero-liquid-discharge direct potable reuse (DPR)
  • Startup fall 2020
  • Leveraging $400k from Rec’s DWPR plus $400k cost-share and NEWT partner
  • Integrating NEWT P1.8 electrocatalysis

 

Research with the desaliNEWT testbed platforms focuses on advancing desalination and direct potable reuse technologies by decreasing energy consumption, increasing water recovery efficiency, and addressing specific water quality challenges such as mineral scaling in desalination and denitrification in direct potable reuse.

  • High-recovery zero-liquid-discharge direct potable reuse
  • Startup summer 2020
  • Leveraging $400k from Rec’s DWPR plus $400k cost-share and NEWT partner

NEWT Humanitarian Skid

  • Recruiting UN Environment and UN Habitat to become deployment partners of the center
  • Collaborate with UN Environment and UN Habitat to install solar disinfection window unit to Ecological Living Modules
  • Lay the groundwork for possible demonstration sites at UTEP and ASU

Research Highlights

Removing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances from groundwaters using activated carbon and ion exchange resin packed columns
Zeng, C Atkinson, A. Sharma, N. Ashani, H. Hjelmstad, A., Venkatesh, K. Westerhoff, P.

Student Spotlight