Combined desalination, water reuse, and aquifer storage and recovery to meet water supply demands in the GCC/MENA region

作者：Noreddine Ghaffour, Thomas M. Missimer, Gary Lee Amy · 发表于：Desalination and Water Treatment · 年份：2012 · DOI：10.1080/19443994.2012.700034 · 被引用次数：86 · 研究领域：Water-Energy-Food Nexus Studies、Membrane Separation Technologies、Solar-Powered Water Purification Methods

Desalination is no longer considered as a nonconventional resource to supply potable water in several countries, especially in the Gulf Corporation Countries (GCC) and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as most of the big cities rely almost 100% on desalinated water for their supply. Due to the continuous increase in water demand, more large-scale plants are expected to be constructed in the region. However, most of the large cities in these countries have very limited water storage capacity, ranging from hours to a few days only and their groundwater capacity is very limited. The growing need for fresh water has led to significant cost reduction, because of technological improvements of desalination technologies which makes it an attractive option for water supply even in countries where desalination was unthinkable in the past. In the GCC/MENA region, operating records show that water demand is relatively constant during the year, while power demand varies considerably with a high peak in the summer season. However, desalination and power plants are economically and technically efficient only if they are fully operated at close to full capacity. In addition, desalination plants are exposed to external constraints leading to unexpected shutdowns (e.g. red tides). Hybridization of different technologies, including reverse osmosis and thermal-based plants, is used to balance the power to water mismatch in the demand by using the idle power from co-generation systems du...