Water Resource Recovery Prize

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Manufacturing Office’s (AMO’s) Water Resource Recovery Prize challenges multidisciplinary teams to present innovative solutions for resource recovery at small- to medium-sized water treatment facilities. To help lower the cost of treatment by extracting additional value from wastewater, the prize seeks to increase resource recovery from municipal wastewater treatment plants across the United States. 

The Water Resource Recovery Prize is part of the Water Security Grand Challenge, which seeks to advance transformational technology and innovation to meet the global need for safe, secure and affordable water. This multiphase competition challenges interdisciplinary teams to innovate cost effective, transformational water treatment technology system configurations and business plans that:

• Accelerate the recovery of valuable resources
• Lower the ultimate cost of small- to medium-sized water resource recovery facilities.

The DOE has launched the prize, inspiring teams that include small- to medium-sized water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) to compete for up to $1 million in cash prizes by developing ideas that provide potential wastewater treatment recovery strategies for wastewater treatment facilities. 

PRIZE STAGES

The prize consists of two phases. Phase 1 challenges teams to submit two high-level facility engineering schematics, a business case demonstrating improvement relative to the existing baseline conditions, and a technical description validating the potential for cost-effectiveness and viability of the resource recovery plan. In Phase 2, selected teams from Phase 1 will be expected to provide a more detailed plan for financing and construction, supported by quantitative analysis and/or modeling.

The winners of Phase 1 will be announced in May 2020. The selected winners will progress to Phase 2, whose winners will be announced in June 2021.

UP TO $1 MILLION IN CASH PRIZES

This prize will distribute a total of up to $1 million of combined cash prizes. As many as 10 winners selected in Phase 1 will receive up to $50,000, while no more than two winners selected in Phase 2 will receive $250,000 in cash prizes.

PRIZE GOALS

The purpose of this prize is to encourage teams of wastewater treatment plants, engineering and design firms, technology developers, resource customers, and others to develop holistic resource recovery plans for their respective wastewater treatment systems.

The proposed solutions should represent innovations that could move the sector of small- and medium-sized WRRFs beyond their current technological status while addressing these challenges:

• Financial stress on municipal budgets.WRRFs purchase about $2 billion of electricity each year and face more than $200 billion in future capital investment needs to meet water quality objectives.
• Cost of disposal of residual biosolids. By turning recovery resources into marketable products, WRRFs can create new revenue streams for upgrading water treatment infrastructure, reducing nutrient pollution, and providing sources of alternative water supplies.
• Increasing value of recoverable resources to offset the cost of recovery. Recoverable resources include energy that can be used on-site or sold, nutrients such as phosphorous and nitrogen that can be used as fertilizer, and clean water that can be reused for agricultural, industrial, and drinking water purposes.
• Advancing system-level energy efficiency. Recovering energy from wastewater reduces the amount of grid electricity required to operate the wastewater treatment plant. Recovered water can also offer a substitute for water sources with a higher level of embedded energy for industrial, agricultural, and municipal use. Moreover, recovered nutrients can be less energy-intensive substitutes for fertilizer on agricultural land.

Please review the official rules  for the complete application process and instructions for competing.

If you want to receive updates on the prize or have any questions, please subscribe by using the contact feature on the HeroX platform or message us directly at .

We’re also looking for ideas on how to best structure this contest to attract groundbreaking ideas that will spark tomorrow’s resource recovery solutions. If you’re not interested in competing but want to help develop and judge the prize, please feel free to contact us.