NSF Engines: Great Lakes Water Innovation Engine

NSF 引擎：五大湖水资源创新引擎

• 批准号: 2315268
• 负责人: Alaina Harkness
• 金额: $ 1470.8万
• 依托单位: Current Innovation, NFP
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Cooperative Agreement
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-03-01 至 2026-02-28
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2315268&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; Engines; Great; Lakes; Water

This NSF Engines award to the Great Lakes Water Innovation Engine will advance our nation’s capacity for innovations in the circular water economy through research, translation, and workforce activities centered around the concept of waste-to-wealth-and-health. The NSF Engine will discover, develop, and deploy innovative viable technologies that (1) attract water-intensive manufacturers to the Great Lakes region while maintaining environmental health; (2) recover valuable resources (like energy, critical minerals and nutrients) from wastewater streams and convert them to wealth; and 3) create an innovation ecosystem to foster employment, ownership, and wealth-building opportunities for people and communities, especially those most in need of economic opportunity.The NSF Engine has an initial region of service that spans three states – Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin – with several anchor points including Chicago, Cleveland, and Milwaukee as priority areas of impact for the first two years. The NSF Engine will be led by Current Innovation NFP, a U.S.-based non-profit. The NSF Engine builds a strong ecosystem including core partners with representation from the manufacturing and energy sectors, national labs and universities (including public and private four-year institutions and two-year institutions), economic and workforce development organizations, entrepreneurship support organizations, non-profits, philanthropies and investment firms that are essential to the NSF Engine’s success. This diverse coalition of partners will be central to R&D, translation, and workforce development efforts.The vision of the NSF Engine is to transform “waste to wealth and health” in the context of water quality. Specifically, this means recovering energy, nutrients, freshwater, and critical minerals from water and wastewater for economic value and removing emerging contaminants such as PFAS— widely used chemicals that break down very slowly over time and have been linked to harmful health effects in human and animals— from water to protect human health. The NSF Engine has three core functional areas: (1) Use-Inspired Research and Development (R&D); (2) Translations and Partnerships (Translation); and (3) Inclusive Ecosystems (Ecosystems), each of which inherently addresses one or more key barriers that must be overcome to realize the vision.The Great Lakes Water Innovation Engine’s R&D and translation efforts will focus on the following challenges: Challenge 1 will lead to novel material platforms for efficient and selective separation of valuable resources and contaminants of emerging concern (e.g., PFAS) from wastewater and associated waste streams; Challenge 2 will result in emerging process technologies to advance recovery of energy and critical minerals from various water sources; and Challenge 3 will deliver sensors and sensor networks for real-time sensing, monitoring, and detection to support sustainable and economically viable processes needed in the first two challenges. Built on the NSF Engine’s strong and evolving partnerships across academia, government, and end users in industry and utilities, this NSF Engine aims to develop intelligent water resource recovery systems testbeds at multiple scales (bench, pilot, and full) to demonstrate, integrate, and deploy these novel technologies to support sustainable water-intensive industry that is growing in this region. The NSF Engine also aims to develop domestic supply chains for materials essential to growing industries like battery production and electrification.Recognizing the relatively undefined and immature nature of the markets for water resource recovery and circular water economy technologies, the NSF Engine centers the workforce development efforts around training and education programs aimed at preparing future innovators, workers, and entrepreneurs in the emerging space of a circular water economy. The NSF Engine will leverage the Inclusive Ecosystem Work Group, which engages more than a dozen regional foundations, family offices, community organizations and nonprofits with workforce development and entrepreneurship investment priorities, as a governing body to create and implement a workforce development and STEM education strategy that aligns with the NSF Engine’s technical goals. Specific activities include developing new K-12 curriculum, pre-apprenticeships, apprenticeships, job/skills training programs, higher education curriculum, or other needs as the NSF Engine’s initial and continuous gap analysis concludes.This NSF Engine brings together a strong coalition of partners and core functions that are in excellent alignment with regional assets and priorities. The leadership team has identified critical R&D topic areas and expertise to drive circular water innovations to support sustainable water-intensive manufacturing industry in the region. The innovation ecosystem built through this NSF Engine cultivates sustainable talent development and collective discoveries across critical partners, which creates connected pathways that translate innovation to impact in the circular water economy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF引擎奖授予五大湖水创新引擎将通过围绕从废物到财富和健康的概念的研究、翻译和劳动力活动，提高我国在循环水经济方面的创新能力。NSF引擎将发现、开发和部署创新的可行技术，这些技术(1)在保持环境健康的同时，将水密集型制造商吸引到大湖区；(2)从废水中回收宝贵的资源(如能源、关键矿物和营养物质)并将其转化为财富；以及3)创建一个创新生态系统，为人们和社区创造就业、所有权和创造财富的机会，特别是那些最需要经济机会的人。NSF引擎的初始服务区域横跨三个州-伊利诺伊州、俄亥俄州和威斯康星州-前两年有几个锚点作为优先影响地区。NSF的引擎将由总部位于美国的非营利性组织Current Innovation NFP领导。NSF引擎建立了一个强大的生态系统，包括制造和能源部门、国家实验室和大学(包括公共和私人四年制机构和两年制机构)、经济和劳动力发展组织、创业支持组织、非营利组织、慈善机构和投资公司的核心合作伙伴，这些对NSF引擎的成功至关重要。这种多元化的合作伙伴联盟将是研发、翻译和劳动力发展努力的核心。NSF引擎的愿景是在水质方面将“废物转化为财富和健康”。具体地说，这意味着从水和废水中回收能量、养分、淡水和关键矿物质，以实现经济价值，并从水中清除新出现的污染物，如全氟辛烷磺酸--广泛使用的化学物质，随着时间的推移分解非常缓慢，并与对人和动物的有害健康影响有关--以保护人类健康。NSF引擎有三个核心功能领域：(1)受使用启发的研发(R&A；D)；(2)翻译和伙伴关系(翻译)；(3)包容性生态系统(生态系统)，每个生态系统固有地解决实现愿景必须克服的一个或多个关键障碍。五大湖水创新引擎的研发和翻译工作将集中于以下挑战：挑战1将导致有效和选择性地从废水和相关废物流中分离有价值的资源和新出现的关注的污染物(例如，PFAS)的新材料平台；挑战2将产生新的工艺技术，以促进从各种水源中回收能源和关键矿物；挑战3将提供传感器和传感器网络，用于实时感应、监测和检测，以支持前两个挑战所需的可持续和经济上可行的进程。基于NSF引擎在学术界、政府以及工业和公用事业领域的最终用户之间强大且不断发展的合作伙伴关系，NSF引擎旨在开发多个规模(长凳、中试和全面)的智能水资源回收系统试验台，以演示、集成和部署这些新技术，以支持该地区正在发展的可持续水密集型行业。NSF引擎还旨在为电池生产和电力等增长行业必不可少的材料发展国内供应链。NSF引擎认识到水资源回收和循环水经济技术市场的相对不确定和不成熟的性质，将劳动力发展努力集中在培训和教育项目上，旨在为未来的创新者、工人和企业家在循环水经济的新兴领域做好准备。NSF引擎将利用包容性生态系统工作组作为管理机构，创建和实施与NSF引擎的技术目标一致的劳动力发展和STEM教育战略。该工作组涉及十多个具有劳动力发展和创业投资优先事项的地区基金会、家族办公室、社区组织和非营利组织。具体活动包括开发新的K-12课程、学徒前培训、学徒培训、工作/技能培训计划、高等教育课程或其他需求，如NSF引擎最初和持续的差距分析得出的结论。该NSF引擎将与地区资产和优先事项非常一致的合作伙伴和核心功能聚集在一起。领导团队已经确定了关键的研发主题领域和专业知识，以推动循环水创新，以支持该地区可持续的水密集型制造业。通过NSF引擎构建的创新生态系统培养了关键合作伙伴的可持续人才发展和集体发现，从而创建了将创新转化为循环水经济影响的连接路径。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。