ARPA-E Archived Funding Opportunities

The purpose of this Request for Information (RFI) is to solicit input for a potential ARPA-E program focused on the development of technologies to recover high energy-value materials from wastewater to reduce energy demands and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with conventional sourcing and waste stream treatment. Wastewater in this RFI is broadly defined, and includes municipal, livestock, industrial, and mining sources. High energy-value materials under consideration are nutrients (i.e., ammonia and phosphorus) and critical minerals, where the latter are a group of 50 elements in the periodic table including lithium and rare earth elements (REEs).

Ammonia losses from wastewater represent more than 50% of ammonia demand in the United States, requiring approximately 0.4 quads of energy per year to supply (quads/yr) and resulting in annual emissions of more than 60 million metric tons (MMT) of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO₂ eq).

Metal losses in select industrial and mining wastewaters can be large as well. For example, produced water contains sufficient lithium to provide all U.S. needs (e.g., approximately 3,000 metric tons in 2022), while select mining wastewater can contain milligram per liter (mg/L) quantities of select REEs (e.g., cerium and neodymium).

The goals for this programmatic concept include the evaluation of technologies capable of efficiently recovering:

• Ammonia (or ammonia with phosphorus) as a high-quality feedstock for direct input to fertilizer supply chains or hydrogen carrier markets
• Critical minerals that can displace metal ore production or overseas procurement for domestic use

Capable technologies will be energy efficient, highly selective, and durable over extended use. Processes will involve few sequential steps and will be easily automated, easily adaptable to existing or new wastewater facilities, and scalable (e.g., modular).

ARPA-E seeks input from environmental, chemical, mechanical, electrical, biological, and systems engineers, organic and inorganic chemists, microbiologists, and others with relevant expertise. Additionally, ARPA-E seeks input from prospective end users or beneficiaries of such technologies. These include, but are not limited to, water and wastewater utilities, metals mining and processing companies, oil and gas developers, semiconductor facilities, intensive animal farmers, fertilizer producers and distributors, and raw metal suppliers.

This RFI is focused on soliciting input regarding novel approaches to recover industrial-grade high energy-value materials from wastewater that can directly enter existing supply chains. Such approaches may include but are not limited to:

• Highly selective separations that use adsorbents or membranes;
• Electrochemical, pressure, or thermal-driven separations;
• Catalytic, electrocatalytic, or biologically-facilitated reactions that promote recovery;
• Novel process designs that minimize energy use and maximize recovery; and
• Approaches to evaluate technical, economic, environmental, and technology-to-market feasibility of these strategies.

Areas Not of Interest for Responses to this RFI:

• Work focused on basic research aimed purely at discovery and fundamental knowledge generation;
• Efforts to recover only phosphorus with incomplete recovery of ammonia;
• Work focused on valorization of organics in wastewater; and
• Photocatalytic-driven redox reactions.

RFI Guidelines:

Note that the information you provide will be used by ARPA-E solely for program planning, without attribution. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THIS NOTICE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A FUNDING OPPORTUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT (FOA). NO FOA EXISTS AT THIS TIME.

The purpose of this RFI is solely to solicit input for ARPA-E consideration to inform the possible formulation of future research programs. ARPA-E will not provide funding or compensation for any information submitted in response to this RFI, and ARPA-E may use information submitted to this RFI without any attribution to the source. This RFI provides the broad research community with an opportunity to contribute views and opinions.

No material submitted for review will be returned and there will be no formal or informal debriefing concerning the review of any submitted material. ARPA-E may contact respondents to request clarification or seek additional information relevant to this RFI. All responses provided will be considered, but ARPA-E will not respond to individual submissions or publish a compendium of responses. Respondents shall not include any information in the response to this RFI that could be considered proprietary or confidential.