USAID Desal Prize: Call for Innovations

Calling all desalination innovators! Do you have environmentally sustainable, cost-efficient and easy to maintain brackish water desalination technology that can provide clean water for households and crops in developing countries?  If you do, the Desal Prize wants YOU!

On June 16, Securing Water for Food: a Grand Challenge for Development officially opened the call for applications for the Desal Prize, a new competition that is looking for cost-effective and environmentally sustainable small-scale brackish water desalination technologies for use in developing countries facing severe water stress.  Technologies must be powered by renewable energy and provide both potable water for humans and water appropriate for crops

While brackish water desalination technologies do exist on the market, few, if any, are environmentally sustainable or suitable for use in rural or remote settings. The Desal Prize will provide $400,000 in awards as well as mentoring to the top innovations that meet the competition’s criteria.

The Desal Prize was launched on March 21, 2014 in Washington D.C. during U.S. Tech H2.O, a World Water Day event. The prize is the result of a historic partnership between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of The Netherlands (MFA-NL). Desal Prize participants will also benefit from a partnership with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which will provide technical guidance and access to the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility  to test Semi-Finalists’ technologies and determine Finalists.

If you think your desalination technology has what it takes, apply now through August 1. Get the latest news and updates about the Desal Prize at www.thedesalprize.org and by following @securingwater #DesalPrize.