While desalination technology is becoming increasingly popular as costs come down and demand for water grows, some sociopolitical factors still hamper its adoption.

Water scarcity is a global challenge, with growing populations putting pressure on a finite supply of water. Responding to this challenge is desalination technology, with the cost of desalinated water coming down as technology evolves.

Desalination, however, is plagued by some serious problems, including environmental issues. Often overlooked are the sociopolitical factors impacting the adoption and proliferation of this technology, but a team from Khalifa University has used multiple cases from several countries to identify these factors and their influence on desalination around the world.

Yazan Ibrahim, Research Engineer, Roqaya Ismail, Graduate Student, Dr. Fawzi Banat, Professor of Chemical Engineering, and Dr. Hassan Arafat, Director of Khalifa University’s Center for Membranes and Advanced Water Technology (CMAT), all members of CMAT, with Adetola Ogungbenro, graduate student from the KU Department of Chemical Engineering, and Tom Pankratz from Global Water Intelligence, reviewed the sociopolitical factors involved and published their findings in the Elsevier’s international journal

“Historically, water availability has always been considered fundamental for human civilizations to evolve and flourish, from the early Mesopotamian age to the current rapidly growing cities in the Middle East,” explained Ibrahim. “Over time, wasteful water use, mismanagement, and significant environmental challenges have triggered severe depletion and degradation of the available freshwater resources, with adverse effects on human health, living conditions, and social and economic prosperity.”

The UAE has limited natural water resources and uses desalination to make seawater drinkable. Today, most of the country’s potable water comes from over 70 major desalination plants, which account for 42 percent of the country’s water needs and nearly all of its potable water, and around 14 percent of the world’s total production of desalinated water. However, water scarcity is not confined to arid countries.

“Since its inception, the evolution and growth of desalination technologies have made water production appear more sustainable than ever before,” explained Ibrahim. “Scarce freshwater resources in MENA countries have resulted in an upsurge in the number and size of desalination plants. Furthermore, the rapid development of this region has led to higher dependence on desalination to sustain this development.”

Yet, despite the benefits that can be reaped from using desalination to provide such a critical resource, the adoption and proliferation of desalination are impacted by a variety of economic, environmental, and sociopolitical factors.

Much of the resistance to desalination stems from the cost. Energy accounts for around 70 percent of the cost of desalination, with this energy typically derived from fossil fuels. However, the sociopolitical factors must not be overlooked.

“Although the economic and environmental factors have received more attention, there is evidence to suggest that the use of desalination technologies and their associated impacts would most likely exacerbate the existing inequalities in a society,” explained Ibrahim. “This was attributed to the increased greenhouse gas emissions, increased water prices, urban growth motivation, shifting geopolitical relations related to water security, and increased chemical pollution.”

Even building a desalination plant in certain areas can be difficult. One study proposed aesthetic acceptability – the noise and look of a desalination plant – as a barrier.

The research team used a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis as the framework for a critical review of the sociopolitical factors that impact the adoption and proliferation of desalination. A SWOT analysis is typically employed to help gain insights into the strengths and opportunities of an initiative or concept as well as the associated weaknesses and threats.

“We defined ‘sociopolitical’ factors as factors with a significant social dimension, which have either underlying social, economic, or political root causes and consequences within those spheres,” explained Ibrahim. “We identified eight strengths and opportunities, and seven weaknesses and threats.”

The strengths and opportunities include: the decentralization of water supply, fast deployment, and low physical footprint that comes with some desalination technologies with the potential to help remote communities and tourist facilities flourish. Desalination can provide sufficient quantities of water as and when needed, which can significantly enhance the water security of a nation, while also supporting regional stabilities by evading any conflict over water resources. This also means there are a plethora of opportunities for society to benefit from desalination technologies. Local employment opportunities during the construction and operation of desalination plants are one such benefit, but easy access to water also means more work and education opportunities for women.

As for weaknesses, the visual impacts, noise and land use issues were among the most-cited concerns. Beyond this, another weakness of desalination lies in the unintended consequences of excessive reliance on desalination and the potential impacts of poor mineralization of desalinated water on human health. Freshwater contains various minerals which may offer health benefits and it’s not yet understood if desalinated water that has not been re-mineralized could have adverse health effects. Threats to desalination stem from social tension among those who mistrust the technologies as well as the wide range of anthropogenic and natural causes that could halt operation. The latter ranges from cyberattacks to natural disasters and oil spills.

The team’s research makes it clear that integrating desalination into a country’s water supply can yield significant direct and indirect benefits, in terms of political stability, water security and economic growth. Desalination can also provide a boost to tourism, agriculture and education although various threats and weaknesses are also noted.

“We wanted to note that these sociopolitical benefits and challenges can be difficult to quantify and compare across different domains,” explained Ibrahim. “But understanding these factors can help make the adoption and proliferation of desalination technologies much smoother, with more robust engagement among the multiple process stakeholders involved.

“Since its inception, desalination has delivered a range of benefits to societies in arid regions and supported their economic development and political stability. It must be recognized, however, that many factors are at play when it comes to the sociopolitical dimension of desalination. A holistic approach to this subject is essential.”

Jade Sterling
Science Writer
20 January 2021

The post The Sociopolitical Factors Impacting the Adoption and Proliferation of Desalination appeared first on Khalifa University.

Graduate Students, Research Associates and Post-Doctoral Fellows to Work on Project that Presents Three Internship Opportunities for UAE National Students

Khalifa University of Science and Technology and Sandooq Al Watan, the private sector initiative to boost the UAE’s social development, today announced they have signed a sponsored research agreement to collaborate on developing direct solar desalination devices.

The agreement was signed by Mohamed Al Qadi, Director General of Sandooq Al Watan and Dr Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive Vice-President, Khalifa University of Science and Technology. Officials and senior management representatives from both partners were present on the occasion.

Titled ‘Direct Solar Desalination Devices’, the project aims to bring unmatched scientific understandings and ‘know-how’ towards achieving a reliable desalination technology that offers high efficiency, large scalable capacity, and low energy consumption, in addition to being powered by solar energy.

Dr. Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive Vice-President, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, said: “The research collaboration with Sandooq Al Watan validates our commitment to effectively address the water-energy nexus challenges through finding clean energy solutions. Additionally, this partnership will pave the way for our students to work on research in desalination technologies, which remains one of the most important avenues to access water – a scarce resource in our region.”

Mohamed Al Qadi from Sandooq Al Watan, said: “This is an extremely important project that will address two big priorities for the UAE. First, the use of renewable energy to desalinate water will significantly reduce the UAE’s carbon footprint and enable us to advance our climate change agenda. Second, the project will help advance our water security agenda by providing the nation with resilient fresh water supplies. We have full faith in Khalifa University and their Emirati researchers to develop this important and groundbreaking technology. We also would like to thank Aldar for their contribution towards funding Sandooq Al Watan’s research programs in the field of water and the environment. We encourage more researchers to apply through www.researcher.ae”

The project will be led by Principal Investigators Dr Faisal Abdulla AlMarzooqi, Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering, associated with Khalifa University’s Center for Membranes and Advanced Water Technology (CMAT) and Dr. Tiejun Zhang, Associate Professor, Mechanical and Materials Engineering. They will work together with a team of MSc students, research associates and postdoctoral fellows, while the research project will present three internship opportunities for UAE national students.

The project will be executed through CMAT’s state-of-the-art facilities, proceeding with fabrication, system testing and demonstration, and will conclude with scalability and market feasibility. The project gains relevance because of worldwide interest in the integration of solar energy harvesting devices with desalination. The desalination market, valued at US$16.4 billion in 2017, is estimated to grow with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.5% during the 2018-2026 period, according to market intelligence firm Research and Markets.

Clarence Michael
News Writer
2 February 2020

The post Khalifa University and Sandooq Al Watan launch groundbreaking project to develop Direct Solar Desalination Devices appeared first on Khalifa University.

A new type of 3D-printed feed spacer could make membrane-based seawater desalination processes, such as reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration, more efficient, according to new findings by researchers at Khalifa University’s Center for Membranes and Advanced Water Technology (CMAT).

The feed spacers, designed and manufactured with the help of 3D printing to achieve complex geometries and sizes, are described most recently in the Journal of Membrane Science, by a team led by KU’s Dr. Hassan Arafat, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Director of CMAT. The team also includes professors Rashid Abu Al-Rub, Hector Hernandez and Giovanni Palmisano as well as researchers Oraib Al-Ketan, N. Sreedhar Navya Thomas and Mahendra Kumar. The KU team collaborated with Dr. Reza Rowshan, Executive Director of Core Technology Platforms Operations at NYU Abu Dhabi, to print the feed spacers using the 3D printer available at NYUAD’s Core Technology Platforms facility.

A patent has been filed on the new feed spacer design with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

“Feed spacers play an important role in promoting turbulence of the feed water, which then affects the water flux, an indication of how efficiently the water flows through the membrane, which has a direct impact on the power consumption in desalination plants, especially those that use reverse osmosis processes,” explained Dr. Arafat.

Reverse osmosis (RO) removes salt from seawater by pushing water under pressure through a semi-permeable membrane that allows water molecules through but blocks the dissolved salts. Because the water is being pushed at very high pressure to overcome its natural osmotic pressure, it consumes a lot of energy. More energy is required to overcome the issue of membrane fouling – when organic and inorganic deposits buildup on a membrane’s surface, reducing its ability to filter impurities.

Feed spacers are netted sheets made from strong polymer materials sandwiched between two membrane layers to create space for the water to flow through. Fouling usually occurs first at the feed spacers. The intersections where its filaments meet, known as ‘dead zones,’ provide nucleation sites for scaling and deposits of organic impurities or microbes. In addition to fouling, the overall design and geometry of the feed spacer also affects the water flux, or the flow of water through the membrane.

Traditional commercial feed spacers are planar, or flat sheets of netted plastics, which repeat the same diamond or rectangular shape – these are the feed spacer’s ‘cells’.

Dr. Arafat’s team took a different approach, realizing that additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, can be leveraged to produce materials with unique and precise pore geometrical configurations that can stand up to the rigors of high-pressure membrane desalination systems.

“The unique benefit of 3D printing over conventional manufacturing processes is its ability to fabricate structures with complex forms and shapes that can be optimized for fluid flow. This creates new applications for structures that we couldn’t use before the era of 3D printing,” Dr. Arafat explained.

One such class of complex geometries are triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS), which can be described mathematically as having perfectly curved surfaces with no self-intersecting or enfolded surfaces. TPMS have various properties that enable smooth fluid flow, making them ideal candidates for a number of applications in water research. ‘Triply periodic’ means that the structure can be patterned in the 3D space and ‘minimal surface’ means that it minimizes surface area for a given boundary.

“We theorized that the interconnected maze-like pathways of TPMS structures would enhance turbulence through the feed channel, while the perfectly smooth minimal surface would minimize pressure drop, as well as minimize locations for the attachment of foulants,” Dr. Arafat explained.

His theory proved true. After exploring a range of different configurations and shapes, Dr. Arafat’s team developed TPMS feed spacers that improved water flux by 16% using RO membranes and 38% using ultrafiltration (UF) membranes, when compared to a commercial spacer.

The feed spacers also proved to significantly reduce fouling. The team visualized fouling patterns on the membranes using crystal violet stains, which revealed significantly less biofilm depositions. The TPMS spacers showed a reduction in biofouling up to 91% compared to commercial feed spacers. Last but not least, due to their intrinsic curvature, the TPMS spacers were able to achieve higher flux and lower fouling while reducing the pressure drop – an energy consumption – in the feed channel. “This is the first time this combination of benefits has been demonstrated for a novel spacer design,” Dr. Arafat said.

3D printing allowed the researchers to print one contiguous feed spacer with interconnected repetitive cells, giving it a significant advantage over traditional feed spacers, which must be woven together and often lack precise conformity. With a greater level of control over the cell shapes, they were able to achieve curvature between the feed spacer’s cells, which improved the hydrodynamics of the feed spacer and increased its surface area; both of which contributed to an increase in water flow.

“Curvature creates turbulence within that structure, while a flat 2D structure creates more resistance,” Dr. Arafat explained.

“These spacers have shown great promise in enhancing both reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration processes, in terms of flux enhancement, energy consumption and fouling reduction,” he added. As a result, new applications of TPMS architectures are now being explored by the team, covering a range of potential applications in water and wastewater treatment.

The UAE relies on desalination plants for most of its potable water, which is why Dr. Hassan works to find new solutions aimed at making seawater desalination more efficient and sustainable.

Erica Solomon
Senior Editor
16 October 2019

The post Improving Membranes in Water Desalination with 3D Printed Feed Spacers appeared first on Khalifa University.