Letter of intent is due by 5:00 PM Eastern on Monday, Jan. 8, 2018.
The Energy Department’s Geothermal Technologies Office seeks to partner with a small business to commercialize a novel desalination process - Forward Osmosis (FO) - driven by low-enthalpy geothermal heat. This Technology Transfer funding opportunity encourages small businesses to propose a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project that leverages this desalination technology that has been developed at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL).Researchers at INL have developed a process that harnesses natural osmotic forces to extract freshwater from wastewater in a forward osmosis (SPS FO) process.
This award-winning INL technology could be utilized in applications where minimization of wastewater volumes or zero liquid discharge is important, and where the concentration of water sources containing economically valuable materials is targeted. While the target application for commercialization is flexible, the low grade heat must come from a geothermal source.
A mandatory letter of intent is due by 5:00 PM Eastern on Monday, Jan. 8, 2018.
More information on this opportunity can be found at https://science.energy.gov/sbir/funding-opportunities/ (Topic 11A of funding opportunity DE-FOA-0001771).