Dubai plays host to the 13th International Desalination Association (IDA) World Congress

The bi-annual International Desalination Association (IDA) World Congress, held from November 7-12, 2009, in Dubai, was hosted by DIT-TechnoPark, the science and technology facilitator of Economic Zones World (EZW). The event was held under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

The IDA World Congress on Desalination and Water Reuse was officially opened by H.H. Sheikh Majid Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority. The opening ceremony was attended by Federal Ministers and senior government officials from the UAE and other GCC countries including H.E. Mohammed Bin Dha’en Al Hameli, Minister of Energy; H.E. Dr Rashid Ahmad bin Fahad, Minister of Environment & Water, UAE; H.E. Abdullah Al Hussayen, Minister of Water and Electricity, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; H.E. Eng Fahmi Al Jowder,Minister of Electricity and Water, Kingdom of Bahrain, along with delegations, corporate leaders and industry experts from across the world.

Sheikh Majid presented the ‘IDA World Water Masters Award’ to Dr Farouk El Baz, Research Professor and Director of the Centre for Remote Sensing at Boston University for his extensive research and significant work in groundwater storage and recovery. Under the leadership of El Baz, scientists from Centre conducted extensive research, located and mapped the highest levels of an underground dry lake in northern Darfur. This discovery has been followed up with the launch of the 1001 Wells Project, an ambitious humanitarian initiative to provide access to water to thousands of Darfur refugees, living facing an acute scarcity of water.

The IDA has decided to name the first of the 1001 wells in Darfur after El Baz, in recognition of his untiring efforts to implement the project. (See Box on The Darfur Initiative.)

The opening ceremony also featured the launch of the Excellence Centre for Integrated Water Management, a world class initiative to undertake applied research in Water Cycles, sustainable solutions for the ecosystem and the proper use of water resources by Salma Hareb, CEO of Economic Zones World. Environment to the fore Speaking at the ceremony, H.E. Mohammed Bin Dha’en Al Hameli, UAE Minister of Energy, said: “Despite the advances that have been achieved in water desalination internationally and regionally, the world water situation is worsening due to the inadequate availability of clean water, population increases, wastage and bad practices in water usage. ... it has become incumbent upon us all to take a serious stand and to keep doing all we can to conserve water irrespective of its source including desalinated water, through encouraging research and scientific experimentation to develop new designs for desalination plants which are cost effective, technologically advanced and environmentally friendly so that we can achieve desalination for a better world.”

In his speech, Dr Rashid Ahmad bin Fahad, UAE Minister of Environment and Water, pointed out that there are more than 30 desalination plants operating in the UAE with a capacity of 1.3 billion m3/year meeting 98% of the country’s water needs. He revealed that future projections indicate increase in demand from 1.5 billion m3/year to 5 billion m3/year by 2020. In light of these forecasts, the Ministry of Environment and Water, in cooperation with its strategic partners, is currently working to develop strategies to maintain water resources and manage the demand to ensure sustainability.

In order to mitigate climate change, the UAE is also examining the options of using nuclear and renewable energy in desalination processes. In a statistics-packed address to the audience, H.E. Abdullah Al Hussayen, Minister of Water and Electricity, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, wondered that the proliferation of statistics on the global water condition belied the notion that the world has a firm grasp on the extent and depth of the impact of the shortfall in potable water and sanitation. He said: “If we continue with the way we use water, an additional one trillion m3/year would be needed to feed the extra three billion expected to populate the earth by 2025. The only feasible solution is improved efficiency.” As agriculture consumes 80% of water resources worldwide, improving irrigation efficiency from the current 35% to 50% is a low tech and affordable option for most nations. Stressing on the need to reduce per capita consumption in municipal use, Al Hussayen said: “If Munich, one of the prosperous cities in a prosperous nation (Germany) with enormous resources can make do with 90- 100 litres per day per person, so can rest of the world. Obviously, wealth and cost of product don’t tell the whole story.”

The Saudi minister also peppered his speech with stand-out analogies to drive home his points.

To mention just two:

“Lack of water and sanitation services kills about 4,500 children every day. To put this number in perspective, it is as if 10 jumbo jets fall off the sky every day.”

“Imagine if all the water in planet earth is put in a container with a capacity of 26 gallons – the amount that is available for human consumption doesn’t exceed half a table spoon.”

Al Hussayen also pointed out that despite the desalination industry’s rapid growth, less than one per cent of the world’s population is served by desalination. Moreover, the cost reductions achieved through improvements in desalination technology have been offset by increased labour and material costs. For example, the lowest tendered price for the Ras Azzour project in Saudi Arabia (one million m3/year of water and 1,000 MW of electricity) was $1.2/m3, the highest ever offered compared to 19 cents/m3 awarded for a similar plant three years ago. “While the world financial crisis had something to with that, the trend is definitely not down,” he noted.

Singapore’s System Approach Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Singapore highlighted the progress and achievements of Singapore International Water Week (SIWW), which has emerged as the Asia Pacific region’s premier water event for policymakers, industry leaders, experts and practitioners in the water industry. Ibrahim revealed that Singapore is undertaking detailed studies on the city state’s vulnerability to climate change by localising the IPCC regional models to its specific circumstances to identify the adaptation responses needed. He shared insights from a discussion on the ‘systems approach’ to water management at the Water Leaders Summit in SIWW. “This (systems approach) centres on the notion that water is not managed in isolation but is an integral part of a bigger system, along with energy, food, waste and health,” he explained. For instance, water treatment and distribution require energy, while water is also needed in energy production. In the same vein, by-products such as biogas could be reclaimed from wastewater treatment process to generate electricity and improve the overall efficiency of the treatment. Dr Yaacob Ibrahim concluded his address by highlighting the strides made by PUB Singapore to improve resource efficiency. As part of its target of reducing energy consumption by 10%, PUB has successfully implemented measures like sludge incineration, facility optimisation and energy reclamation.

The Bahrain experience

In his address, H.E. Eng Fahmi Al Jowder, Minister of Electricity & Water, Kingdom of Bahrain, touched upon “four vital issues of contemporary and unanimous concern,” namely, management of water, desalination and water re-use, use of renewable energy for desalination and protection of the environment. Al Jowder blamed inefficient management and irrational use of water for the water crisis confronting the world today. Commenting on the water scenario in the GCC region, he said: “In the arid zones of Arabian Gulf region where desalination is the main source of water, water management is the focal point of sustaining economic development. At the present rate of consumption, it is estimated that the Arabian Gulf region will require 32 billion m3/year of water by 2010 and around 50 billion m3/year by 2025. Such a huge demand necessitates wise water demand management.”

The water control required for water demand management can be achieved by adopting a conservation and realistic pricing strategy in the short term and integrated water resources management approach in the long term so as to better manage the water resources.

Touching on Bahrain’s privatisation experience, he said despite misgivings, Bahrain has adopted privatisation of electricity and water as an important step to achieving its 2030 vision of economic development. Bahrain first toyed with the privatisation of water in 2002, when the Electricity & Water Authority (EWA) signed an agreement with aluminium producer ALBA Bahrain to purchase seven million gallons of potable water from the latter to distribute to its customers. In 2006, the second privatisation milestone was achieved with EWA selling its biggest water and electricity production facility – the Al Hidd Electricity and Water Station – to the Hidd Power Company. “The primary benefit was that we didn’t need to worry about operation and maintenance costs,” said Al Jowder. The third milestone of water privatisation in Bahrain will take place when the Al Dur project, which will be fully built and operated by the private sector, becomes operational in June 2010. “The project will have a capacity of 48MIGD (218,000 m3/day) of water and 1,234MW of electricity. The water production will further increased to 100 million gallons in the next phase,” the minister revealed. Al Jowder also underlined the need to develop alternative energy resources in the Gulf countries because the main challenge for new water and electricity projects in the future would be sufficient availability natural gas. He said, “Bahrain generates about 143 MIGD of desalinated water and 2,800 MW of electricity from power and water stations that consume nearly 500 million cubic feet of fossil every day. The required amount of natural gas has almost doubled in less than a decade which alone requires serious consideration in finding potential alternative resource of energy including renewable energy.”

He revealed that EWA has constituted a committee to assess renewable energy as an alternative energy resource for production of water and electricity in Bahrain. Al Jowder also called upon the desalination industry to help mitigate the environmental concerns associated with desalination. He said: “Concentrated brine from desalination plants with high salt content, elevated temperatures and chemicals residues are discharged into the oceans and seas with little no treatment. In fact, chemical residues should be treated to the greatest extent possible. Thermal and high salinity effluents should be dealt with on-site before being discharged into them in a way they circulate with the currents and diffuse harmlessly. There is also need for strict legislation for quality control on the discharge of effluents from the desalination plants into the sea.” Al Jowder concluded his address by inviting the IDA Environmental Taskforce to host its first meeting in Bahrain in 2010.

Future of membranes

The keynote address of the 13th IDA World Congress was delivered by David H Koch, co-owner and Executive Vice President of Koch Industries and President of Koch Membrane Systems, who dwelled on Koch Industries’ initial involvement with water treatment membranes in 1963, when it provided start up capital to Professor Raymond Baddour of MIT to set up the ABCOR Company to commercialise his research. ABCOR was later acquired by Koch Industries and renamed Koch Membrane Systems (KMS). Subsequent acquisitions by KMS included Romicon, a producer of hollow-fibre capillary Ultra Filtration (UF) membranes, Fluid Systems, which commercialised the Spiral Wound Reverse Osmosis membranes under the ROGA brand and Puron, a German developer of MBR technology.

Koch revealed out he has given more attention to his membrane business than to any of his other businesses over the past 10 years. He continued, “People frequently ask me how the executive vice president and major shareholder of a $115 billion per annum corporation can justify spending two days a week with a $110 million per annum subsidiary? The answer is simple – I believe there still remain enormous opportunities to improve membrane products as well as almost unlimited opportunities for growth in this business. While technical changes in the past 20 years have transformed our industry, I believe that there are more changes in store particularly in the formulation of membranes which will lead to further improvements.”

He noted that a key factor that has enabled the desalination industry to grow rapidly has been its commitment to innovations whether it was thermal technologies or membranes. Declaring that he is a firm believer in the concept of economies of scale and its relevance to membrane desalination, Koch predicted that large diameter elements will supplant the current 8-inch diameter industry standard elements due to their cost effectiveness. He explained, “It is a well known principle that the larger a piece of equipment or system, the lower is the cost per unit of the product handled by that equipment or system. Our experiences demonstrate that RO plants using large diameter elements reduce the footprint of the plant by up to 50% compared to those using standard 8-inch diameter elements. The large size elements have also proved to be invaluable in shortening project construction schedules to meet tight delivery requirements.”

Koch ventured forth to declare that low pressure UF membranes will have a greater overall impact on the drinking water and wastewater industry than RO. He said: “There is a definite trend to embrace economies of scale in UF and MBR systems; it is possible to use vessels containing UF hollow fibres that are over one metre in diameter and almost 2.5 metres tall resulting in significant reductions in the plant footprint size and overall cost of treatment plant. These large sized vessels contain 25 to 50 times membrane area of older 5-inch to 10 inch diameter UF water cartridges most commonly used.”

Koch noted that there are possibilities for improving the composition of membranes used in the elements. For example, the thin film composite membranes used in RO elements can be improved to operate at low transmembrane pressures and provide greater rejection of salt. UF membranes used in MBR or drinking water purification applications could be improved to make them more resistant to cleaning chemical degradation and increase their life span. As with RO membranes, UF membranes could also be made to operate at lower pressures with superior rejection.

The KMS president also stressed on the need to reduce membrane manufacturing costs while working to improve the geometry of membrane elements and upgrade the performance of membranes. He recommended investments in automation and computer controlled manufacturing lines to cap labour costs and improve the performance consistency of the membranes.

Towards the end of his address, Koch donned the prediction hat to announce what he felt would be the key trends dominating the desalination market in the next decade. While energy prices have declined from their 2008 peaks, there is a strong possibility that future prices could escalate dramatically. This likelihood is persuading customers to pay more attention to the energy costs in system design, which in turn, is driving innovations in membrane composition formulations, energy recovery devices and more energy efficient process designs. Customers will look beyond initial capital cost to focus on the overall life cycle costs of their desalination or wastewater treatment systems. The trend of life cycle cost analysis will grow as more customers realise that low initial capital cost doesn’t necessarily equate to better value. For industry, the challenge will be to develop ever smarter ways to reduce life cycle costs even as customers restructure the bidding process to achieve their objective of purchasing systems with lowest capital and operating costs.

Koch called upon the desalination industry to work towards resolving the environmental impact of desalination in the same way they would address other engineering challenges. “With larger water treatment plants being built, the potential impact on the environment is bigger than ever,” he observed. He also called on the industry to educate customers. “We see people paying a premium for bottled water and then complaining about the quality of water in the tap. The industry knows what goes into producing great quality water. We need to help our customers value that effort,” he said.

Lisa Henthorne, the outgoing President of IDA, in her closing remarks, said: “The theme of our Congress is meant to capture our hope for the future and the vision we want to inspire in our industry. Desalination and water reuse offer our growing population what nothing else can – an abundant source of fresh water through which our health can be maintained, our economies can prosper, our standard of living can be enhanced, and water can be recycled repeatedly, thereby minimising our environmental footprint on our planet.”