From Modeling to Testbeds: Taking an Expanded Look at Wastewater Reuse

The primary focus is on energy for water, considering the myriad tradeoffs influencing the adoption of wastewater reuse, particularly considering its energy intensity.

Wastewater reuse offers a compelling opportunity to concurrently tackle water scarcity and enhance energy efficiency. Potentially game changing opportunities could be realized through novel integration of wastewater reuse with resilient power infrastructures (i.e., microgrids and battery energy storage), economically promising activities like aquaculture for commercial products and critical mineral extraction, electrochemical commodity production, geothermal energy generation and others.

While water reuse shows promise, the application space is complex, making it difficult to identify economically viable solutions. A range of modeling tools are available to assist with such analyses; however, rapid changes in the opportunity space (i.e., emerging technology, new fit-for-purpose applications, secondary value streams, and multi-sector tradeoffs) require enhanced and new approaches. Given the growing complexity, models also need to be grounded with experimental data from testbeds that can explore this range of tradeoffs.

Near-Term Opportunity: The feasibility of wastewater reuse could expand with the exploration of new application spaces. To fully capitalize on the potential of water reuse, there is the need to create a holistic approach for evaluating the feasibility of water reuse across a myriad of scenarios, as well as the establishment of testbeds to ground truth their efficacy.

High Resolution Modeling: Spatially and temporally resolved modeling is needed for exploring the disparate quantitative relationships between municipal and industrial wastewater sources and potential end-users. Such analyses could consider local nuances in both the waste- and product-water streams, potential value streams, and tradeoffs against alternative water sources.

Regional to Global Scale Modeling: Regional to global scale modeling provides a valuable complement to high resolution modeling by contextualizing these localized studies within a broader, collective setting. Straight forward application could be made by leveraging integrated multisector models capable of a basin, national and global perspective.

Testbeds: Scalable real-world testbeds are valuable for bounding forecast and model conditions, providing model inputs (validating modeling efforts), as well as de-risking component technologies and their myriad arrangements. Existing research facilities have energy-water components and are positioned for taking on research across potentially beneficial sectors, while evolving plans to site data centers on national laboratory properties could offer exciting new possibilities.

Success Measures: Success is best measured in terms of expanded water supply realized with improved energy efficiency and cost. Equally important is the identification of new opportunities for coordination and synergies across the energy, water, and waste management sectors. These successes could be realized in part through the analysis of tradeoffs associated with water reuse in a variety of settings. Key performance indicators could include quantitative metrics such as potable water saved, energy reductions, economic impacts and avoided freshwater withdrawals assessed alongside qualitative measures of cross-sector coordination and regulatory applicability. Success measures related to establishing water reuse testbeds include generation of datasets cataloging chemical / biochemical / physical alterations of water streams, efficiency alterations of various sector technologies under various flow arrangements, and correlations thereof.