Desalination and Water Purification Research Program Pitch to Pilot for Fiscal Year 2019 | BOR DO 19 F017

Opportunity Information: Apply for BOR DO 19 F017

The Desalination and Water Purification Research Program (DWPR) Pitch to Pilot for Fiscal Year 2019 is a discretionary federal funding opportunity from the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, focused on moving promising water-treatment ideas out of the lab and into real-world pilot testing. The program is aimed at research and development where the public benefit is broad but the private sector is unlikely to fund the work alone because the costs and technical risks are too high or the payoff is too diffuse. Reclamation is specifically looking for efforts with national significance, meaning the underlying water challenges are large-scale and the results could help a wide range of communities, utilities, and industries rather than a single niche user.

At its core, the DWPR program’s purpose is to reduce the cost, energy use, and environmental impacts associated with treating impaired or otherwise unusable water supplies. This includes work relevant to desalination, water purification, and related treatment processes that can expand reliable water supplies under increasing stress from drought, population growth, and aging infrastructure. The opportunity also ties into broader federal priorities and cross-agency initiatives, including efforts connected to the Water Subcabinet, the Water Reuse Action Plan, the Water Security Grand Challenge, and a Presidential Memorandum focused on promoting reliable water supplies and deliveries. In practical terms, applicants should frame their projects not just as interesting technology demonstrations, but as steps toward scalable solutions that improve water resilience and security.

The projects Reclamation wants to fund under this call must be pilot-scale, meaning they operate at a meaningful flow rate and under realistic conditions rather than purely bench-scale or laboratory experiments. A key eligibility requirement is that the technology or process being tested must run at flow rates above one gallon per minute, and the testing must use natural water sources rather than synthetic or lab-created feedwater. This emphasis on natural waters is important because real source waters bring complexities like variable salinity, organics, scaling potential, biofouling, temperature swings, and trace contaminants that often determine whether a technology is truly viable outside controlled settings. The pilot work is expected to help determine the technical feasibility, practical operability, and economic potential of the approach, including enabling preliminary estimates for capital costs and operations and maintenance costs.

Reclamation is especially interested in technologies or processes that are innovative, disruptive, or otherwise meaningfully different from standard approaches, and the application is expected to clearly explain what makes the technology unique. That could mean a new treatment mechanism, a novel membrane or materials approach, a process intensification concept, an improved brine management strategy, energy recovery improvements, hybrid systems that reduce chemical usage, or operational/control innovations that materially change cost or performance. The program is not limited to any single treatment pathway, but the proposal needs to make the case that the innovation is substantial and that pilot testing is the right next step to prove it in the field.

Administratively, this opportunity is issued as a cooperative agreement, which typically means the federal agency anticipates having substantial involvement during the project period compared with a standard grant. The funding opportunity number is BOR DO 19 F017, and it falls under CFDA 15.560 in the science and technology/research and development category. The posted award ceiling is $150,000 per award, with an expectation of about five awards. The opportunity was created on April 30, 2019, with an original application closing date of June 25, 2019.

Eligibility is broad and includes state, county, and local governments; special district governments (often relevant for water districts); public and private institutions of higher education; federally recognized tribal governments and other tribal organizations; nonprofit organizations with or without 501(c)(3) status; for-profit organizations (including entities other than small businesses); small businesses; and even individuals. This wide applicant pool reflects the pilot-to-deployment nature of the work, where innovation may come from universities, startups, established firms, utilities, or collaborative teams. Overall, the opportunity is best understood as targeted support for field-relevant pilot demonstrations that can credibly show whether a new desalination or purification approach can lower costs, cut energy demand, and reduce environmental burdens when treating real, challenging waters.

• The Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Desalination and Water Purification Research Program Pitch to Pilot for Fiscal Year 2019" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.560.
• This funding opportunity was created on Apr 30, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jun 25, 2019. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $150,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 5 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, Individuals, For profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses.

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