Desalination in the GULF

If you live in this part of the world, you have to survive on desalinated water from the sea. There is no river here. There is a creek in Dubai, like river but from the sea to the inland. It is seawater.

With the increasing consumption as well as lots of wastage, the sea water desalination has impact on the environment as well as 'hairs', lots of men have become bald due to the hard water...

Desalination: Facts and procedures

1. What is desalination and brine?

The overall procedure of sea water desalination is similar in most cases. Seawater is pumped into the plant and pre-treated to meet water quality requirements. The pre-treated water enters the
desalination unit and is divided into a highly pure product (drinking water) and waste water, commonly called brine. This by-product of the desalination process is concentrated salt water containing a mixture of chemicals used during plant operation and is pumped back into the sea.

2. Desalination technologies:

More than 90 per cent of all desalinated water in the Gulf comes from thermal desalination. Large plants use steam from power plant turbines as a heat source for desalination. Thermal processes use heat to evaporate water, leaving the salt behind in the brine. More than 80 per cent of desalinated water comes from Multi Stage Flash (MSF). Membrane processes use pressure or electricity to force water through a semipermeable membrane which blocks salts and other dissolved solids. The membrane technology is Reverse Osmosis (RO) which accounts for 6 per cent of the production.

3. Daily discharge loads into the Arabian

Gulf from desalination plants in the region:

23.7 tons — chlorine
64.9 tons — antiscalants
300 kilograms — copper

4. Arabian Gulf main producers of desalinated seawater:

Saudi Arabia — 25 per cent of the worldwide seawater desalination capacity, of which 11 per cent is in the Gulf, 12 per cent is in the Red Sea, and 2 per cent is unaccounted for.

United Arab Emirates — 23 per cent

Kuwait — 6 per cent.

5. Impact: The concentrations of different pre-treatment chemicals in Multi Stage Flash and Reverse Osmosis effluents are critical for the marine environment.