Industry Day for ONR BAA 09-013

The posting date of the above referenced BAA is to be determined (TBD). Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination has become the Navy standard for the shipboard production of freshwater since its introduction into the Navy in the early 1990s. RO plants have provided significant operational and cost benefits over conventional distillers which have been used on Navy ships since before the introduction of steam propulsion. These benefits include reduced monitoring and manpower requirements and significant reductions in operational costs including: reduced power requirements, independence from ship steam systems, reduction in the use of chemical additives, and large improvements in reliability and maintainability. Over the past two decades, there has been a large increase in the use of membrane based separations for both liquid and gas streams, much of this due to technical advancements such as improved membranes and pumps, novel membrane topologies and operational approaches, and staged separation processes. The Office of Naval Research has encouraged such technology development through the Expeditionary Unit Water Purification (EUWP) research program. It is the goal of the BAA to further develop promising water purification and desalination technologies, on a component and not a complete system level, over a two year period to a readiness level that would be appropriate for consideration for use in a robust shipboard desalination system. It is anticipated that there will be a second program to build complete shipboard desalination systems to a Technical Readiness Level 6, possibly using technologies matured during this program. (A description of Technical Readiness Levels is available at: http://www.onr.navy.mil/ctto/naval_needs.asp) Major areas of focus include: advanced pretreatment; advanced chemical pretreatment enhancements; advanced reverse osmosis membranes; advanced energy recovery systems; and alternative approaches to desalination, pretreatment. Industry Day will be held at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, CA on 25 February 2009 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m (Pacific). Details concerning registration are available at the meeting website: https://www.onr.navy.mil/about/events/regdetail.asp?cid=494 Registration shall be completed by 4:00 p.m. (Eastern) on 20 February 2009. If requested attendance exceeds the capacity of the conference room, it will be necessary to limit attendance of personnel from each organization. All expenses associated with attendance will be the responsibility of the participant(s).