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...
Advanced technologies for municipal wastewater purification: technical and economic assessment
Abstract The water resources of Kuwait are limited to desalinated water to meet the requirements for all freshwater needs, unreplenishable brackish water as a supplementary source for blending and agriculture, and municipal wastewater which is treated and mainly discarded to the sea. Limited quantities of the treated effluents are utilized for agriculture and greenery purposes. The large quantities of treated effluents have a great potential to replace the brackish water supplies and to redress the balance of demand for irrigation water. Research work was carried out at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR) to assess the technical viability and economic feasibility of implementing reverse osmosis (RO) technology to renovate Kuwait's treated wastewater effluent. This paper describes the adopted treatment, alternative pretreatment, characteristics of the permeate and cost of the renovation treatment. The results indicate that municipal wastewater can be treated by advanced technologies to produce an excellent water which is almost devoid of salts, pollutants and microorganisms. The total cost of such treatment is estimated to be almost half of the distillate cost produced by multistage flash (MSF) plants, whereas the cost of treating the tertiary treated wastewater alone by additional advanced treatment constitutes only 25% of the MSF distillate costs. The Government of the State of Kuwait has decided to implement this technology in constructing a wastewater treatment and reclamation plant at Sulaibiya in the context of privitization to produce an effluent of a quality that can be considered an additional water resource for non-potable uses.
Removal of Organic Matter by Physico-Chemical Mechanisms in Wastewater Treatment Plants
Solids separation, adsorption onto participates and volatilization are the main physico-chemical mechanisms responsible for the removal of organic matter in wastewater treatment plants. In addition, solids separation as well as adsorption performance may be enhanced by chemical flocculation/precipitation with hydrolyzing metal salts. With the help of particle size distributions and other characteristics of the particulates at different treatment stages, more insight can be gained into the interactions between paniculate properties and solids separation performance. Significant removal of trace organics is achieved by adsorption onto paniculate surfaces and stripping in aeration tanks. Examples illustrate the adsorption of the relatively large quantities of substances contained in detergents and reveal the effect on water and sludge quality. Octanol/water partition coefficients of trace organics may be used together with oxygen transfer characteristics to determine the potential of volatilization into the air. The effect of flocculants on paniculate and dissolved organics removal in wastewater treatment is illustrated when Fe-salts are dosed to raw sewage, to the biological stage or to tertiary filters.