Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility Alamogordo, New Mexico December 1, 2010

Hosted by
WRRI Director Karl Wood
and
NMSU Institute for Energy and the Environment Director
Abbas Ghassemi

Tour participants will meet at the Stan Fulton Athletic Center parking lot on the NMSU campus at 1:00 pm. The afternoon tour will begin on the ca mpus where participants will have an opportunity to tour research plots on which brackish water is being applied to turf grasses. Buses will then transport participants to the facility in Alamagordo and will arrive back at the Fulton Center around 5:00 pm. A reception at the Barbara Hubbard Room in the Pan American Center will follow the tour.

The Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility is a focal point for developing technologies for the desalination of brackish and impaired groundwater found in the inland states. This facility brings together researchers from federal government agencies, universities, the private sector, research organizations, and state and local agencies to work collaboratively and in partnership. The mission is to pursue research into supply-enhancing technologies for brackish groundwater including solutions to concentrate management, renewable energy/desalination hybrids, desalination technologies for produced water, and small-scale desalination systems. Participants will view and learn about the skid-mounted water purifier that was used for hospitals in Biloxi, Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina and that was on standby for Haiti. Water desalination apparatuses being developed by entities such as NMSU, General Electric, the Bureau of Reclamation, and others will be highlighted.