A joint power and desalination plant for Sinai and the Gaza Strip

Corrosion experience data bank system for desalination and power plants (corex)

A<scp>uthors</scp>’ R<scp>eply</scp>

Across the globe and since the dawn of civilization, fresh water resources have been a major economic, environmental and political issue that affect human welfare and progress. Today, the desalination industry is experiencing rapid growth across the globe; unfortunately, the industry lacks several key elements that should make this expansion more efficient, more profitable to the owner, less expensive to the consumer and with limited impact on the environment. These elements include development of codes and standards for various desalination activities and having integral training programmes for qualifying the manpower. This study focuses on evaluating the training programme adopted since 1994 in the Doha West desalination and power plant. Further development of the plant manpower is achieved through short course training on various topics related to design, operation and maintenance of desalination and power plants. Evaluation of the training programme is presented in terms of various operating parameters, which include plant availability, production efficiency, performance ratio, specific manpower and specific consumption of cleaning acid and balls. Results show drastic enhancement in plant performance, where availability increased to 80% and production efficiency is close to 100%. Also, the plant performance ratio remains at values close to clean operation for more than half of the operating time. The specific manpower shows continuous decline because of the increase in the production efficiency and elimination of unnecessary overhead costs. Operation policy focused on increasing the use of on-line ball cleaning and reducing the frequency of acid cleaning. This is advantageous, since acid cleaning promotes metal corrosion, while on-line ball cleaning has negligible effect on the integrity of the preheater tubes.

Impact of seawater desalination and wastewater treatment on water stress levels and greenhouse gas emissions: The case of Chile

Existing and the future planned desalination facilities in the Gaza Strip of Palestine and their socio-economic and environmental impact

Seawater intake and pre-treatment/brine discharge — environmental issues

Since the outbreak of the Gaza conflict in October 2023, a severe humanitarian crisis has occurred across the entire Gaza Strip. Owing to the challenges of conducting traditional ground-based surveys in the region, satellite images have become critically important as an objective source of information. In response to the demands of humanitarian relief, this study utilized VIIRS, SDGSAT-1, and Yangwang-1 nighttime light (NTL) satellite images to provide a multi-scale assessment of the spatiotemporal dynamics of power supply in the Gaza Strip during the conflict. To reduce errors in quantitatively estimating power supply based on nighttime light, the quality of daily VIIRS NTL images was enhanced and radiometric intercalibrations were conducted between SDGSAT-1 and Yangwang-1 NTL images. The result indicates a severe disruption of power supply in the Gaza Strip as a consequence of the conflict. Specifically, the overall power supply had a sharp decline shortly after the outbreak of the conflict on 7 October 2023 and persisted in a downtrend during the conflict, culminating in a reduction of around 94% as of 1 March 2024. In contrast, the power supply in areas surrounding the Gaza Strip remained relatively stable during the conflict. On 2 December 2023, 24 municipalities were found to have significant reductions in power supply exceeding 90%, and around 95% of buildings had power losses of more than 75%. Furthermore, approximately 70% of hospitals and UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip were identified to have power outages on 1 January 2024. Among the five governorates of the Gaza Strip, Rafah was the most resilient in terms of power supply during the conflict. This study could make a positive contribution to the timely assessments of the Gaza conflict and support the implementation of humanitarian relief efforts.

Inside Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital

During the operation of desalination plants of various principles, negative environmental impacts occur, firstly due to emissions of combustion products formed as a result of burning primary fuel required for the energy supply of the desalination process, and secondly due to emissions of concentrate, which is a solution of salts and minerals. Addressing the environmental problems associated with the operation of desalination plants is an urgent task. One possible solution is the development of energy-efficient installations in which brine is evaporated to a dry residue state, representing a commercially viable product. Since thermal desalination plants require heat removal for condensation of water vapor and supply of higher-potential thermal energy for the evaporation process, integrating heat transformers into the thermal schemes of desalination plants is promising. The authors have developed a thermal scheme of a gas-contact desalination plant, integrated with a steam compression heat transformer (HT). The influence of the working agent type on the performance indicators of the HT within the desalination plant was studied, and various HT energy carriers were analyzed. The highest transformation coefficient with the lowest compressor energy consumption is achieved when operating with the R600a working agent. Key performance indicators of the HT were calculated for different bubbling and drying temperatures of the steam-air mixture. The distribution of the working agent flow between the HT condensers was determined. It was established that the most efficient operating mode of the plant occurs at a heat lift height of 15°C. The developed technical solution for isobutane-based HT is effective at seawater salinity not exceeding 20 g/l.

Water quality evaluation of small scale desalination plants in the Gaza Strip, Palestine

The article deals with the problem of choosing the optimum desalination system for seawater for the Crimean region. Criteria are proposed for choosing the optimal method of desalination - “study and reliability”, “geographic”, “industrial application”, “economic”, “electricity consumption”, “environmental safety” and others. Criterion “study and authenticity” means that the method must be well studied and applied in practice (therefore, the methods of desalination not introduced in production are not accepted). Criterion “geographical” takes into account the climatic features of the regions. Criterion “industrial application” analyses the industrial application of the method. The criterion of “economic” takes into account the costs of water preparation, reagents, additional treatment facilities and the like. The criterion of “limitation” takes into account the limitation of the initial level of salt content of the cultivated water for desalination. The criterion of “temporal” takes into account the period of possible operation of desalination plants. The criterion of “electricity consumption” takes into account the energy consumption for desalination of sea water. Criterion of “ecological safety” takes into account the physicochemical properties of water after desalination. Based on these criteria, a choice of 12 alternatives was made. It was found out that the most suitable method of desalination in this region is vacuum distillation.

The carbon footprint of desalination: An input-output analysis of seawater reverse osmosis desalination in Australia for 2005–2015

Handling the variability and uncertainty associated with integrating large capacities of renewable energy sources (RES) into the power grid is a challenge that is increasingly influencing the power systems operation. At the same time, the growing need for desalinated water in arid areas increases the importance of suitable energy sources for sustainable operation of water desalination plants. However, as power and water system operators have traditionally operated their systems in isolation, there is a lack of understanding of the interdependence and interactions between these two systems. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a risk-based two-stage stochastic co-optimization framework that coordinates the operation of a renewable-rich power system with the operation of grid-connected reverse-osmosis water desalination plants (RO-WDP) to minimize their combined operational costs while increasing the utilization of RES. From the power system operation standpoint, the RO-WDPs are considered as controllable demand, and the proposed model integrates the energy flexibility of RO-WDPs in the day-ahead power system operation. The proposed model considers the operational constraints of both power and water desalination systems, thus co-optimizing their operation without compromising the reliable supply of power and water to end-users, while taking into account the uncertainty of the demands and RES. Simulation results demonstrate the benefits of the proposed coordination on enhancing the power system efficiency, facilitating RES integration, and minimizing the combined operational costs of both systems while minimizing their operating risk using conditional value at risk.

Desalination experience in Morocco

Hybrid systems in seawater desalination-practical design aspects, status and development perspectives