Qatar water challenges
Abstract Qatar has experienced rapid economic growth due to the discovery and production of fuel oil and natural gas (NG). The natural renewable water resources (rainfall and groundwater [GW]) are depleted; and are estimated as 71-m3/per year per capita in 2005. This is far below the water poverty line of 1,000-m3/yca. The GW withdrawal is excessive (compared to replenishment) and is used mainly for irrigation. A very small amount of GW is treated to become potable water and is distributed to consumers. The municipal potable water mainly contains (99%) desalted seawater (DW) and 1% GW. The consumption of DW and electric power (EP) is continuously rising due to the increase in both population and the standard of living. The population have been more than doubled from 2000 to 2010. The DW is produced in power plants generating both EP and DW, and is called Cogeneration Power Desalting Plants (CPDP). These CPDPs are using either: simple gas turbines (GT) cycle or GT combined with steam turbine (ST) to form a...
A fuzzy logic based irrigation system enhanced with wireless data logging applied to the state of Qatar
In arid regions, developing environment and crop-specific irrigation scheduling that reduces water lost via evapotranspiration is a key to a sustainable and better managed irrigation. This paper presents a practical solution based on intelligent and effective system for a field of hyper aridity in Doha-Qatar. The system consists of a feedback fuzzy logic controller that logs key field parameters through specific sensors and a Zigbee-GPRS remote monitoring and database platform. The system is easy to deploy in existing drip irrigation systems without any physical modification. For a given crop, the fuzzy logic controller acquires data from these sensors and then applies well-devised fuzzy rules to produce appropriate time and duration for irrigation. All variables are fuzzified using trapezoidal and triangular membership functions. In this fuzzification, Max-Min inference engine and Mamdani-type rule base is adopted in order to make the best decision for each situation. Typical data in summer and winter showed that the controller ensures maintaining the soil moisture above a pre-defined value with non-abrupt oscillations. The system compensates the amount of water that is lost through evapotranspiration as predicted by Penman-Monteith model and hence allows predicting future water consumption. A local station first processes and saves real-time data received from the field controller via wireless Zigbee protocol to finally transmit these data to a remote station via a GPRS link. This enhancement enables tracking system performance in real time and creating a database for analysis and improvement. It follows that the deployment of fuzzy control combined with remote data logging would foster better management of irrigation and water resources in hyper-arid lands such as Qatar.
Pretreatment of the municipal wastewater feed for reverse osmosis plants
Potable water can be produced at a reasonable cost if reverse osmosis (RO) technology can be applied to renovate secondary/tertiary wastewater effluent. This implementation would yield many advantages to Kuwait, namely satisfying the increasingly agricultural, industrial and domestic demands for good quality water free of viruses and bacteria, preserving the natural strategic water resources, reducing environmental pollution resulting from direct discharge of secondary/tertiary municipal effluents to the sea and meeting unexpected emergency cases of shortages in fresh water production for certain applications. Membrane fouling is the most important obstacle that has to be overcome for successful RO. Membrane fouling usually results in reduction of the permeate production rate, an increase in salt passage with time and/or membrane damage. Causes of fouling include scaling, plugging of membrane pores by suspended matter, biological fouling and degradation of the membrane itself. Membrane fouling is very much aggravated with the use of wastewater effluent as a feed for RO systems. The Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR) is implementing a research project to desalinate tertiary treated wastewater using RO in Kuwait. This paper describes the process of designing a proper pretreatment process capable of producing a substantial reduction in potential membrane foulants. Results obtained from laboratory and pilot studies revealed that fast mixing, coagulation, flocculation and sedimentation using Fe III, cationic polyelectrolyte and a sanitizing agent can produce an acceptable quality of effluent feed for the RO process. This paper discusses the progress made in establishing proper pretreatment of this feed to meet the requirements of RO membrane manufacturers.