Optimal managing the coastal aquifer for seawater desalination and meeting nitrates level of drinking water (original) (raw)

Pumping seawater from coastal aquifers for supplying desalination plants

Geologica Acta, 2004

The lack of water in the coastal areas demands an onerous search for an appropriate solution. One solution is that of water transfer from areas of surplus, but this is itself problematical. Technological developments have introduced the possibility of utilizing desalinated seawater as a drinking water source at a competitive price. Abstraction from coastal aquifers that are connected to the sea appears to be the cheapest means of supply. However, pumping poses some problems due to the corrosiveness of seawater. These problems include the difficulties of choosing suitable sites for the abstractions, drilling method, casing, filter pack, as well as the design of a monitoring system to assess aquifer behaviour as a result of the generally high exploitation rate. The 31 boreholes that have been drilled in the Andarax Delta near the city of Almeria are cited as an example of a real application.

An engineer's guide to desalination

2008

7 Energy Supply 7.1 The Nature of Energy 7.2 Evaluation of the Performance of Desalination Plants 7.3 Reverse Osmosis and Energy Recovery 7.4 Specific Primary Energy Consumption 7.5 Renewable Energies 8 Pre-Treatment and Post-Treatment 8.1 Reasons for Pre-Treatment and Post-Treatment 8.2 Classification of Raw Water 8.3 Seawater Relevant Parameters 8.4 Limiting Factors 8.5 Conventional Pre-Treatment Strategies 8.6 Future Trends in Pre-Treatment 8.7 Post-Treatment and Potabilisation

Seawater Desalination for Municipal Water Production

2011

This paper examines the optimal allocation of several inputs in the context of seawater desalination by reverse osmosis (RO) as a source of municipal (or commercial or industrial) water. A cost-minimization model is developed, a production function is estimated, and sensitivity analyses are conducted using the optimization model to investigate the effect of environmental conditions and economic factors on the optimal input portfolio and the cost of operating a modeled seawater desalination facility. The objectives of this paper are to better understand the effect on the seawater desalination facility’s costs and input portfolio from changes in water quality, membrane lifespan, daily operations schedule, and energy prices. Findings include that lower total facility costs are associated with warm-weather water quality parameters, longer membrane life, and mid-range daily operations schedule (14.265 hours/day). Under most conditions, an interruptible power supply regime reduces facilit...

Inland Desalination: Potentials and Challenges

Advances in Chemical Engineering, 2012

Advances in Chemical Engineering 450 plants is the generation of a concentrate effluent (brine) that must be properly managed. Disposal of such brines presents significant costs and challenges for the desalination industry due to high cost and environmental impact of brine disposal. www.intechopen.com Inland Desalination: Potentials and Challenges 451 AQUASTAT program (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO]) was launched to form global information system on water and agriculture, the main objective of the program is to collect and analyze information on water resources, water uses, and agriculture water management within different countries. Information on the quantity of major water resources is present in table 2.1. Water Resource Volume, (1000 km 3)

Desalination technology for optimal renovation of saline groundwater in a natural reservoir

Desalination, 2000

Huge amounts of water are currently diverted down-stream from the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret) to the rift valley, Israel. Part of the non-utilized water is saline (around 2000 rag/1 chlorides) originated in the northern section of Lake Kinneret and separated from the bulk high quality water (between 200 mg/1 and 250 mg/1 chlorides). The flow rate of the saline water is very much affected by the level of the water in the lake that serves as the prime natural storage reservoir for water supply in Israel. The wasted amount of the diverted water can be shared, after adequate treatment, for use in the Rift Valley primarily for agricultural irrigation in the Kingdom of Jordan and the State of Israel for their mutual benefits. A management model was defined and tested towards optimal treatment of the saline water. The two major purposes of the model are (i) to delineate a methodology for economic assessment towards optimal use of membrane technology, and; (ii) to provide guidelines for optimal membrane selection in regards to the pretreatment stage. The linear model defined takes into account the cost of the feed saline water, the desalination stage, based on the reverse osmosis (RO) process, and the brine disposal. Technological constraints refer primarily to the longevity of the membrane, their performance and time dependent changes in flow-rates. Eight different saline water qualities, subject to various pretreatment options, for a tentative desalination plant for a capacity of 30,500 mVd close to Lake Kinneret were examined. The final treated unit water cost, which is expressed by the objective function, includes investment, operation and maintenance, water intake, pretreatment, RO components, post treatment, brine removal and incentive for permeate low salinity. Analyzing various scenarios allows optimal selection of the membrane and the related pretreatment method. The cost range of the desalinated water according to the model is between 0.39/m3and0.39/m 3 and 0.39/m3and0.45/m 3.

Coastal Aquifer and Desalination Plants: Some Interpretations to New Situations

2010

The Mediterranean south-eastern Spanish coastline is a semiarid region, with rainfalls that usually do not exceed 300 mm/year, where surface water is scanty and frequently nonexistent. The different human activities developed in this area, as urban and touristic development and especially the intense agricultural activity, exercise a strong pressure on the groundwater resources. This situation has notable repercussions on the quantity and quality of the water. In the last few years, several desalination plants have been built along the coast of the province of Almeria to face the growth of the water demand. These plants are supplied of seawater by means of boreholes. In general, the groundwater behaviour patterns may be modified in relation to their natural situation by cause of these extractions. In order to manage adequately, and to avoid serious affections to the aquifers involved in the desalination processes, a suitable knowledge of the hydrogeology and hydrogeochemistry of these resources is needed. The study area is a coastal aquifer of Cabo de Gata near Rambla Morales. A desalination plant has been built here, in a complex geological environment which hydrogeological aspects have not been widely studied yet. Fifteen samples were taken at several depths in order to determine the origin of the investigated waters, its physicochemical properties, as well as the relationship of the aquifer with the seawater. The results indicate that the water has different origins. The relationship of this groundwater with seawater seems complicate.

Sustainable System for Water Desalination

2018

Ankarstiftelsen, a non-profit organization with the mission of assuring the access to basic necessities in developing countries, presented a brief for a sustainable water desalination system, to ob ...

Seawater Desalination Processes.

International Journal of Engineering Sciences & Research Technology, 2014

All over the world, access to potable water to the people are narrowing down day by day. Most of the human diseases are due to polluted or non-purified water resources. Even today, under developed countries and developing countries face a huge water scarcity. The groundwater quality problems present today are caused by contamination and by overexploitation, or by combination of both. The only nearly inexhaustible sources of water are the oceans, which, however, are of high salinity. It would be feasible to address the water-shortage problem with seawater desalination; however, the separation of salts from seawater requires large amounts of energy. Conventional and non-conventional methods are used to distil the water. Both direct and indirect collection systems are included. The representative example of direct collection systems is the solar still. Indirect collection systems employ two subsystems; one for the collection of renewable energy and one for desalination. For this purpose, standard renewable energy and desalination systems are most often employed. Only industrially-tested desalination systems are included in this paper and they comprise the phase change processes, which include the multistage flash, multiple effect boiling and vapour compression and membrane processes, which include reverse osmosis and electrodialysis. The paper also includes a review of various systems that use renewable energy sources for desalination. The paper also includes a review of various systems, characteristics of the major desalination system and REDS Technology Implementation.

Numerical Modeling of Beach Well Intake as Pre-Treatment for a Desalination Plant

Water

Pre-treatment of seawater plays a critical role in removing colloidal particles, algae, sediment, and microbes, which could adversely affect the desalination process. This study focused on the utilization of the natural process of infiltration by beach wells to pre-treat the intake water for the desalination process. The scope of the study was achieved by drilling two beach wells at Al-Khobar and Jubail sites at the Arabian Gulf of Saudi Arabia at 50 m depth each. In addition to that, a total of eight monitoring wells were drilled for pump testing. Numerical modeling was conducted using SEEP/W to investigate the properties of well water flux at the beach wells. The comprehensive physio-chemical parameters such as cation, silt density index (SDI), total dissolved solids (TDS), total suspended solids (TSS), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total organic carbon (TOC), salinity, and alkalinity were analyzed for a quality assessment concerning the actual seawater. Preliminary experimental r...