The Environmental Quality Program invests in research to enable naval vessels to carry out their mission in full compliance with current and anticipated environmental regulations. The Navy typically treats waste water streams (black water, grey water, bilge water) to compliance for release while retaining the concentrated waste for treatment in port. Whereas the Navy is always interested in more efficient treatment processes, systems that operate in the shipboard environment need to be compact, reliable, require minimal manning (operations and maintenance) and have reduced logistics requirements (chemicals, disposable filters, etc.). Investment in waste water treatment has occasionally led to programs in seawater desalination for shipboard potable water systems. Also, new regulations will require the Navy to move away from ballast water exchange (offshore) to ballast water treatment systems to reduce transport of non-indigenous species and prevent economic and ecological damage from aquatic nuisance species.
Research Concentration Areas
- Much of the work in this area is done with applied funding at the level of evaluating and adapting commercial solutions
- This program invests to mitigate specific technical problems with current technologies and to develop new approaches that may offer significant improvements for operation in the Navy shipboard environment.
Research Challenges and Opportunities
- Determine the fundamental chemical and electrochemical interactions that control phase separation in oil-water emulsions
- Develop new methods to filter suspended solids down to ultrafiltration particle size cutoffs without the complexity and maintenance associated with ultrafiltration systems
How to Submit
For detailed application and submission information for this research topic, please refer to our broad agency announcement (BAA) No. N0001425SB001.
Contracts: All white papers and full proposals for contracts must be submitted through FedConnect; instructions are included in the BAA.
Grants: All white papers for grants must be submitted through FedConnect, and full proposals for grants must be submitted through grants.gov; instructions are included in the BAA.