Coffee and geology often go hand in hand. Personally, though, I have a nasty secret…well…actually several nasty coffee secrets. Firstly, I drink mostly decaf. I know: I’m a masochist! Secondly, I drink instant coffee 😨

I rarely even get time to enjoy the coffee before it cools, and iced coffee has its place, but not when it’s below freezing, and not when it’s instant. I usually walk through a whole cycle where I heat my cold coffee in the microwave, forget to take it out until it’s cold again, and repeat. No more, though!

My birthday was about a week and a half ago—39 years young—and my kiddos got me a self-heating mug. Y’all…This thing keeps the coffee warm! God bless technology, innovation, and the times we live in.

Speaking of tech and innovation, I came across some interesting info on the DOE’s efforts to make dirty water cleaner. It’s dense. But don’t worry! I’ll pull out the good stuff for you. I’ve also included some notes on the necessary evolution of geoscience education and how combining power sources can help us achieve greater energy production with a smaller carbon footprint. Let’s dig in!

Sarah Compton

Editor, Enspired

Water Innovation Series: An Intro

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On April 11th, the U.S. Department of Energy announced renewed funding of $75 million over five years for the National Alliance for Water Innovation.

Catch up fast: NAWI is the DOE’s energy innovation hub for desalination.

• NAWI has the largest extended community of any DOE hub or institute, with 108 Research Consortium member organizations, more than 424 Alliance Organizations, and 17,000 individuals. It is funded by DOE’s Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization and Water Power Technologies offices.

• NAWI is led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

• This round of funding is the second phase of the Hub. During its first phase, NAWI funded more than 60 projects across the U.S., focusing on a combination of water treatment, desalination processes, novel automation and water treatment, and modeling tools and analyses.

• This second iteration of NAWI—NAWI 2.0—will focus on improving efficiency while reducing environmental impact on water treatment, delivery, and management systems. It will also emphasize reuse of a variety of wastewaters and water supply management optimization.

Why it matters: Water is the stuff of life, and our industry uses a sizeable amount of it. We also produce water from the subsurface that’s unusable, and we’ve been working on ways to clean up and reuse that with some success.

Where do geos come in? Geoscientists play several key roles in industry water use, including but not limited to:

• In some states, we’re responsible for identifying aquifers and total dissolved solids for state submittal before drilling.

• We’re trained and best qualified to test the water and identify its chemical makeup, which will set the stage for any clean-up.

Go deeper: NAWI released a roadmap specifically for the resource extraction sector, and it’s worth diving into to understand what’s been done and what roles us geoscientists can play.

• Therefore, I’ll be running a series on this topic over the next several weeks.

• For more info on the broad overview I gave today, read here.

• To get a head start on the series, go to the roadmap here.

Tech and the School of Hard Rocks

An article published in the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists’ magazine Outcrop made a key point: technology is changing the landscape of geoscience, and education is following suit.

But …“tacking on” to old curricula is not enough. Students today require an educational experience that parallels the technical immersion they will experience in their everyday lives and careers.

Tech transformation: Education has gotten a boost from technology, and learning that new technology requires time.

• Software: Using software means students need to learn material twice: They need to understand the calculations and science behind the software, and they need to learn how to make the software work.

• Fieldwork: Increased hand-held tech and ruggedization of nearly everything makes it hard to argue for hand-written data. That workflow requires a repeat of every step, increasing the likelihood of errors while decreasing time for important stuff—like thinking about the data you’ve collected and its implications while mowing down chips and salsa in camp.

Hot take: Technology makes it possible to skip the field all together.

Does that mean using tech is better than going to the field if you’re able? Of course not. Get out there if you can! But a lot of folks can’t, and geoscience has suffered the absence of their potentially brilliant insights as a result.

Flyover fieldwork: For example, no one with a physical disability is going to relish the idea of taking a field course where they get to hang out by the car while everyone else high tails it to remote outcrops. Imagine, though, if they had access to a drone that allowed them to tag along remotely with a group, hear all the juicy details, and see all the things.

The bottom line: The digital and information age has seen technological advances at a pace heretofore unknown.

• The skillset required to effectively use new advances is a “must have” for any effective scientist.

• Academia hasn’t given young geoscientists more time to navigate new tech and new skills.

• Some old curricula must be sacrificed to incorporate new necessary skills. Without industry input, universities will be left to make decisions on what to cut and what to keep.

Read up: To get some more information on how technology has changed geoscience education, read here.

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Combinations are the Best

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Chicken and waffles. Hotdogs and ketchup. Fruit and cake. Ok, not that last one, but we all know combining two things can boost the quality of the end product.

Field ops require energy: On-site power is often sourced from diesel generators, but the push to reduce emissions is strong. Texas operators plug into the grid when they can, while Colorado operators have been known to bring in electric motors (usually powered by diesel generators off-site, but shhhhhh...).

Going nuclear: Permian operators are hoping for a clean, reliable boost by exploring the feasibility of using small nuclear reactors to power drilling operations.

Potential pluses:

• Commercial delivery is years away, but the on-site systems are slated to generate 15-megawatts, scalable to 50 MWe. A typical reactor, like the one from The Simpsons, produces 1,000 megawatts of electricity.

• There are loud calls for clean(er) energy, and fossil fuels are going to be a part of the mix for the foreseeable future. Extracting them as cleanly as possible only improves our social license to operate.

• While safety might be a top concern, keep in mind that some submarines, which might have literal missiles fired at them, use nuclear reactors for power. They can be built to withstand a lot of punishment—even oilfield punishment.

Back to the future: Nuclear power is having a bit of a moment with the green revolution. It’s the clear winner in clean energy, but there’s always the pesky concern of “what happens when it goes wrong?” Perhaps these little steps toward integration can help bridge the gap.

Read more: Check out the full article here, and the website for company producing these tiny reactors is here.