A long shower in Jordan is a luxury. The arid country’s water shortage means that water flows to most homes once a week, twice in a good week. For residents without stored water or money to buy bottled water, baths, laundry and everything else requiring H2O must wait.
Jordanian researchers seeking new water sources have turned to desalination – the process of removing salt from saline water. And they’ve looked to University of Rhode Island civil and environmental engineering Associate Professor Vinka Oyanedel-Craver to develop nanoparticles to improve desalination efficiency and reduce costs.
With the backing of a $314,000 grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development and $100,000 from the National Science Foundation, the project launched in early 2014 as a collaboration among researchers in the United States and Jordan.
In the United States, scientists will embed Oyanedel-Craver’s silver nanoparticles in membranes used in the process that eliminates salt from salt or brackish water. The nanoparticles slow the growth of bacteria on the membrane. The infusion of particles directly into the membrane eliminates the need to stop operations to clean the membrane.
“We can reduce the amount of bacteria that starts growing so the membrane works longer,” Oyanedel-Craver says. “You make it way more efficient and less expensive.”
The team is seeking environmentally friendly nanoparticles composed of materials available in Jordan and nearby countries. That will keep costs down and encourage widespread adoption by government water suppliers and private well owners alike. The project calls for URI to develop the nanoparticles, Professor Isabel Escobar at the University of Toledo to infuse them in the membrane and Associate Professor Tequila Harris at the Georgia Institute of Technology to develop the fabrication process. The project runs until July 2015.
Muna Abu-Dalo, an associate professor at the Jordan University of Science and Technology spearheading the project, says the global alliance offers a powerful combination of expertise. URI delivers a long history of developing nanoparticles that turn dirty water into potable water. Oyanedel-Craver has led those efforts and been a notable presence at engineering conferences around the globe.
“She’s very unique in her research and she’s very good at her research,” says Abu-Dalo, who met Oyanedel-Craver at an engineering conference in 2011.
In July 2014, Oyanedel-Craver spent 10 days in Jordan assisting researchers in preparing their labs. She also toured local water facilities, including a desalination plant about 1,300 feet below sea level. It demonstrated the great lengths required to acquire water and the importance of finding ways to reduce costs.
Traveling to the facility, the signs of water shortage scarcity struck the professor, as did the geopolitical tussles that contribute to them. As a result, Jordanians use about 20 gallons of water per day compared with Americans who use about 100 gallons a day.
“I knew about the problems in Jordan, but being there gave me a personal perspective of the problem,” she said.
Jordanian researchers also gained an American perspective, especially from URI civil and environmental engineering graduate student Colleen Grinham. The Middleboro, Mass. resident spent July 2014 in Jordan working with Abu-Dalo and her students. Grinham taught Jordan researchers how to make the nanoparticles and brought the lab up to U.S. research standards.
It was not her first time abroad. As an undergraduate in the University’s International Engineering Program, she spent a year in Germany studying at the Technical University of Braunschweig and interning at Bayer. Jordan marked her 30th nation.
“Going places with a purpose is really important to me,” Grinham says. “With the Syrian refugees, Jordan’s infrastructure and water resources are taking a toll. This work is especially important now.”
Jordan houses more than 613,000 refugees, many fleeing fighting in neighboring Syria. Researchers are discussing applying lessons from the desalination project to low-cost, low- maintenance ceramic filters that Oyanedel-Craver developed for villagers in rural Latin America. They hope to deploy them in refugee camps.
“We’re not just hoping to do research, but also building capacity to do more,” Abu-Dalo says.