Twenty three technical sessions, 240 oral and poster presentations, three-day-long workshops, 1,350 delegates from approximately 60 countries, concurrent exhibition spread over 2,000 square metres showcasing the latest equipment and technology from 67 participating companies - that’s IDA World Congress 2009 statistics in a nutshell.
The 13th bi-annual Congress, themed on ‘Desalination for a Better World,’ was held in Dubai from November 7-12, 2009, under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai.
The Congress was hosted by DIT-TechnoPark, the science and technology facilitator of Economic Zones World (EZW). The organisers, delegates and exhibitors were unanimous in their opinion that this edition of the World Congress was the biggest ever. New initiatives introduced by IDA this time included panel discussions, touch-screen availability of poster presentations, the launch of a peer-reviewed IDA Journal on Desalination & Water Re-use and the official launches of The IDA Young Leader’s Programme and the IDA Affiliates Programme.
The event also brought to the forefront some of the key trends and concerns in the desalination industry, the top most being the environmental impact of desalination plants, in terms of their energy consumption, emission of greenhouse gases, intakes and discharges. During the opening ceremony, every speaker had their two cents on the need to mitigate the environmental impact of desalination, a sea change from the past, when there was little interest in the topic. The desalination industry has started deploying its engineering prowess behind new technologies that help offset the environmental impact and comply with the stricter regulations governing desalination processes.
During a press conference, Tom Pankratz, a director of the IDA and the editor of Water Desalination Report, pointed out that over the last 15 years, the desalination industry has managed to reduce overall energy consumption by up to 50% through technological improvements, while numerous research projects are under way that promise to further reduce energy requirements, including projects that creatively couple desalination plants with wind, solar or wave energy sources to provide the required energy input. On its part, the IDA announced the setting up of an Environmental Task Force for the Arabian Gulf, which will help ensure that environmental issues, unique to this part of the world, would be dealt with in a more focused manner.
The Congress also put the spotlight on key trends in the Middle East, including the comeback of membrane desalination and the adoption of privatisation route to drive performance and efficiencies in desalination and wastewater re-use projects. The panel discussion on the relevance of private finance in delivering competitively priced desalinated water provided an insight into the misgivings about the private sector participating and providing important public services like drinking water. Points that emerged during the panel session will be presented in the February 2010 issue of H20, as also several interviews and features that we have put together about the Congress. Since it is not possible to do justice to an event of such magnitude and wealth of information it provided in a single issue, we have decided to split the content between two issues of H20. We hope you enjoy part 1 of Desal Diary.
