NETL Tool That Determines Impact of Energy Production on Water Quality Passes Milestone

NETL's National Energy Water Treatment & Speciation (NEWTS) database now contains geochemical, geospatial and other characteristics from more than 400,000 water sample records spanning 48 states, enhancing the ability of the open-source tool to determine the impact of energy production on water quality.

"Since it was publicly launched in 2022, NEWTS has undergone significant growth, and passing this data collection milestone is an important step forward," said NETL's Nicholas Siefert, a research mechanical engineer and co-developer of NEWTS.

Prior to the development of NEWTS, data from collected samples of energy-process water, which includes produced water from oil and gas operations, mine drainage, coal ash leachate and power plant effluent, was difficult to find and use because it is often stored in nonstandard formats and managed by various state and federal regulatory agencies.

The NEWTS Integrated Dataset and the NEWTS State-Level Database Dashboard, published on NETL's Energy Data eXchange (EDX), have addressed those challenges by unifying and standardizing energy-related wastewater data.

"A free resource, NEWTS curates and processes the publicly sourced data into a uniform format, providing a simplified path to obtain waste stream compositions and locations," Siefert said. Detailed chemical compositions are provided, including major and minor species. Additional stream information, including pH, total dissolved solids, alkalinity and specific conductivity where available, can also be obtained.

Municipalities, water authorities and other public and private entities can then seamlessly input this high-quality data into water treatment computer software programs, such as Geochemist WorkBench and OLI Studio, to develop appropriate remediation efforts to improve water quality.

"A subset of this novel resource is also featured on the NEWTS State-Level Database Dashboard, which enables quick visualization and exploration of energy-related wastewater data collected from state agencies and research projects across the United States," Siefert said.

According to the NEWTS team, the tool can also serve as a cost-effective method to explore critical mineral (CM) and rare earth element (REE) recovery from wastewater streams. NEWTS identifies energy-related wastewater streams that are rich in CMs and REEs, which are needed to manufacture clean energy components such as wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles as well as components for defense systems, computers, electronics and many other consumer products.

"In this way, NEWTS can help bring new industries and jobs to fossil energy power plant and fossil resource mining communities to ensure they are not left behind in the new clean energy economy," Siefert said.

For Siefert, there is a strong connection between the project's unique acronym - NEWTS - and the name it shares with the newt, a semi-aquatic amphibian. "Like its amphibian counterpart that lives in water and breathes through gills and then lives on land upon reaching adulthood, NEWTS has undergone a metamorphosis," Siefert said.

The similarities don't stop there. "In their habitats, these amphibians perform invaluable functions to protect the health of their ecosystems. We share an environmental purpose in that the NEWTS system, among other things, helps communities improve the health of local water supplies and identify potential revenue sources to improve the economic health of their communities," Siefert said.

NETL is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory that drives innovation and delivers solutions for an environmentally sustainable and prosperous energy future. By leveraging its world-class talent and research facilities, NETL is ensuring affordable, abundant and reliable energy that drives a robust economy and national security, while developing technologies to manage carbon across the full life cycle, enabling environmental sustainability for all Americans.

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