DEVELOPMENT OF AN ADVANCED MEMBRANE DESALINATION TECHNOLOGY TO ADDRESS GROUNDWATER CONTAMINATION IN THE NAVAJO NATION

The Navajo Nation, the largest federally recognized Native American Tribe in the U.S., has an area of over 27,000 square miles. Equal access to clean water on the Navajo Nation is a huge challenge. More than thirty percent of homes within the Navajo reservation lack access to safe drinking water. Many of these families must haul water, and this reliance often results in the use of water that is not safe for human consumption as per U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) guidelines. Unregulated and unmonitored windmill-pumped groundwater is a common source of water for many Navajo communities’ use. However, these sources can have elevated arsenic and uranium levels and poses a serious threat to humans and livestock. To address these challenges, an innovative desalination technology for water remediation using cross-linked polyvinylidene fluoride (CPVDF) hollow-fiber membrane was developed. The laboratory results showed a salt rejection of >99.9% and a water flux > 30 kg/(m²h) during desalination of the groundwater samples from the Navajo Nation. Specifically, there was no arsenic or uranium detected in the filtered water. The high specific surface area (>1,000 m²/m³) of the hollow fiber membrane reduces the footprint of the technology, allowing it to be easily integrated within a portable skid-mounted system that can be installed at any windmill wellhead for the production of high-quality water (TDS<150 mg/L) free of toxic metals. A team from Navajo Technical University (NTU) and New Mexico Tech (NMT) proposes the NTU-NMT Navajo Nation Water Purification Project (N⁴WPP) to install the units at remote locations within the Navajo Nation in partnership with Navajo Nation Chapter Houses.