Strategy of water desalination in the Gaza Strip

Abstract

Desalination became a strategic option in the scarce-water countries, in general and in Palestine, in particular. Its cost competes with the costs of other non-conventional water resources such as wastewater reuse and groundwater recharge. The paper focuses on the Gaza Strip as the study area. Water resources in Gaza Strip suffer from deficit in the water balance of about 30%. From an environmental view, desalination has less negative impact compared to other solutions. It can participate in a significant role in the sustainability of the water resources. Various types of desalination plants in use are discussed. Technical and economical aspects of the various plants are considered. Special attention is given to the reverse osmosis (RO) plants. Although the cost of desalination is still relatively expensive for our case in the Gaza Strip, reverse osmosis desalination is strongly recommended and considered as a strategic alternative in order to overcome the water deficit and meet the future needs of desalination for the Strip. In addition and as part of the strategy, the power consumption of RO systems in Gaza Strip shall be optimized with the Global power consumption and capacity of the power plant under construction.