Desalinated Water Could Help Quench a Thirsty Egypt

Desalinated water could offer Egypt a secure source of potable water, as concerns over future access to water increase, experts say. Countries in arid regions facing scarce water supplies have increasingly turned to desalination, which can turn seawater into drinkable water.

In Egypt, dozens of desalination plants are already used by tourism resorts with limited access to water and the industrial sector. Despite currently making up less than one percent of Egypt's total water production, experts say desalinated water should be a vital component to Egypt's future water security.

“Water desalination is one of the important technologies we need to think about because there is an increasing water deficit, and with all that is going on in Africa, desalination could be one of the most important aspects [for water security],” said Abeer Shakweer,  an adviser for the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology who has been researching water desalination.

Egypt relies mainly on water from the Nile to support its population, but experts warn that factors like growing population, economic development in Egypt and the Nile Basin countries, increased pollution and climate change are likely to drastically reduce Nile resources.

With increasing pressure from upstream countries to change the water sharing treaty that provides Egypt with the bulk of water usage rights, the government is already looking to alternative sources of water, including recycled water, non-renewable groundwater reservoirs and desalination.

Water desalination plants have long been utilized by tourist resorts in the Red Sea, where little fresh water is available. More recently, desalination plants have sprung up in the North Coast catering to resorts and industries. Over 40 percent of Egypt's desalinated water is used by the tourism sector, and roughly 20 percent is utilized by the industrial sector, according to a 2010 report by the Center for Future Studies (CSF), a think-tank at the Cabinet's Information Decision Support Center.

In Egypt, most desalination plants rely on a technology called reverse osmosis to produce potable water or a second process known as multi-stage flash distillation. In reverse osmosis, seawater is pressurized and put through a series of membranes which remove the minerals dissolved in the water. In multi-stage flash distillation, plants boil the seawater and collect the steam as potable water, or water fit for municipal uses.

Though the energy demands of these processes previously kept costs high, new technology is quickly reducing the price tag.  According to the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, it costs between LE4.50 to LE9 per unit of desalinated water, higher than the global average.

“The energy needed to produce the water factors into the expense heavily,” said Salah Rashad, the sales manager for Egypt at Metito, a water management and water desalination company that has been working in Egypt for over two decades.

Costs are higher because instead of relying on large-scale operations, most desalination plants are small-scale, producing water only for surrounding areas. “Before desalinated water was very expensive, but with new technology, the costs should continue to be reduced,” he added.

For desalinated water to be a feasible source of water in Egypt, its costs must be reduced by 20 percent in the short term and 50 percent by 2030, according to a 2010 report by the CFS.  

To reduce costs Shakweer says more attention must be paid to manufacturing the technology in country. Presently, all of the equipment is imported from manufacturers abroad.

“We need to try to localize different technology, which would reduce the cost, allow us to enhance the Egyptian industry, and have complete control over water resources [in terms of producing water],” said Shakweer.

Indeed, experts urge the Egyptian government to focus on utilizing renewable energy such as solar or wind power to help reduce the energy costs alongside creating a manufacturing industry.

“Given that both renewable and desalination technology is abundant, and getting cheaper all the time, it has huge potential,” said Reham Mohamed Yousef, an economic researcher at the CFS, adding, “So why not use an abundant energy like solar to help solve a problem like access to water? Solar energy remains a largely untapped technology in Egypt.”

But, there are drawbacks: seawater desalination creates a harmful brine byproduct. Classified as “industrial waste” by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the brine is commonly flushed back into the sea. In large amounts, the brine damages marine life and the surrounding ecosystem.

According to Rashad, it will be important to recycle the byproduct for industrial purposes to reduce overall water consumption and lessen the environmental impact. To negate the risk to sea life, Metito stores the brine in reservoirs, Rashad added. But, future technologies may be able to reduce the amount of byproduct the desalination process produces.

There are no specific regulations monitoring the desalination process, though the plants are subject to the country's environmental laws. As the industry grows, however, Shakweer says, legislation should focus on localizing the technology, development and easing the path for investors.

Egypt Independent 

Texas' Water Woes Spark Interest in Desalination

Desalinated water inside of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant on April 16, 2012. The $87 million facility produces 27.5 million gallons of water per day, making it the largest inland desalination plant in the world.

Drilling rigs in the midst of cow pastures are hardly a novelty for Texans. But on a warm May day at a site about 30 miles south of San Antonio, a rig was not trying to reach oil or fresh water, but rather something unconventional: a salty aquifer. After a plant is built and begins operating in 2016, the site will become one of the state’s largest water desalination facilities.

“This is another step in what we’re trying to do to diversify our water supply,” said Anne Hayden, a spokeswoman for the San Antonio Water System.

More projects like San Antonio’s could lace the Texas countryside as planners look to convert water from massive saline aquifers beneath the state’s surface, as well as seawater from the Gulf of Mexico, into potable water. The continuing drought has made desalination a buzzword in water discussions around the state, amid the scramble for new water supplies to accommodate the rapid population and industry growth anticipated in Texas. But the technology remains energy-intensive and is already causing an increase in water rates in some communities.

“If you look around Texas and you look at the climate situation and the fact that the reservoirs are being drawn down, there just isn’t much of an alternative,” said Tom Pankratz, the Houston-based editor of the Water Desalination Report, who also does consulting for the industry.

Across the state, 44 desalination plants — none using seawater — have been built for public water supplies, according to the Texas Water Development Board. Ten more, including San Antonio’s, have been approved for construction by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Most projects are small, capable of providing less than three million gallons per day, often for rural areas. The state’s largest is in El Paso, where the $91 million Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant, completed in 2007, can supply up to 27.5 million gallons of water a day, though it rarely operates at full capacity because of the high energy costs associated with forcing water through a membrane resembling parchment to take out the salts. (Production of desalinated water costs 2.1 times more than fresh groundwater and 70 percent more than surface water, according to El Paso Water Utilities, which said that the plant's rate impact amounted to about 4 cents for every 750 gallons of the utility's overall supply.) Last year, the plant supplied 4 percent of El Paso’s water.

                                                                                  The Kay Bailey Hutchison desalination plant.

Interest in desalination surged more than a decade ago, when the technology became more efficient and cost-competitive, according to Jorge Arroyo, a desalination specialist with the Texas Water Development Board. But the severe drought of the past two years has triggered extra calls to his office. Texas holds 2.7 billion acre-feet of brackish groundwater — which translates to roughly 150 times the amount of water the state uses annually — in addition to some brackish surface water. The state water plan finalized this year envisions Texas deriving 3.4 percent of its water supply from desalination in 2060. (It is less than 1 percent now.)

Environmentalists argue that desalination is not a silver bullet because it is energy-intensive and requires disposal of the concentrated salts in a way that avoids contaminating fresh water. Texas should first focus on conservation and the reuse of wastewater, said Amy Hardberger, a water specialist with the Environmental Defense Fund.

“What needs to be avoided is the, ‘Oh, we’ll just get more’ mentality,” she said.

But getting more is what many Texans want. Odessa, which draws water from dangerously low surface reservoirs, is considering a desalination plant that could ultimately become bigger than the one in El Paso. (Odessa’s deadline for proposals is next week.)

Separately, a planned power plant near Odessa is studying prices for the technology. John Ragan, the head of Texas operations for NRG Energy, envisions natural gas power plants along the coast that desalinate water overnight when they are not needed for electricity. 

Residents near the half-full Highland Lakes in Central Texas say that desalination could reduce the water-supply burden on the lakes. Texas Tech University aims to begin wind-powered desalination research later this year, in the West Texas town of Seminole.

The San Antonio project is estimated to cost $145 million in its initial phase, with a daily production capacity of 10 million gallons, and $225 million assuming it is built out to a daily capacity of 25 million gallons (which is possible by 2026). The cost is significantly higher than El Paso’s project, but San Antonio officials say that the figures reflect additional factors like acquiring land — and so far, the project is under budget. Local water rates, along with $59 million in low-interest loans from the Texas Water Development Board, are financing the project.

Desalination means “you’re going to have to spend some money,” said state Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio. But it is worthwhile, he added, because “our whole economic future could be up in the air.” Texans seeking a model, Larson said, should turn to Australia, where a major drought last decade spurred billions of dollars of investments in desalination.

Australia’s focus has been desalinating seawater. That is an option for the Texas coast, but desalinating seawater generally costs more than twice as much as desalinating groundwater because seawater is saltier. Energy can account for 60 to 70 percent of the day-to-day operating costs of a seawater plant, estimated Pankratz, the Water Desalination Report editor.

The largest seawater desalination plant in the country, which is slightly larger than El Paso’s brackish water plant, operates in Florida. Proposals are inching forward for a seawater plant in Texas. The Laguna Madre Water District, based in Port Isabel, completed a pilot seawater desalination project two years ago and is now looking for property on the north end of South Padre Island to locate a larger facility, said Carlos Galvan, the water district’s director of operations. Desalination would reduce the utility’s dependence on the often-diminished Rio Grande.

The Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority is also mulling seawater desalination, perhaps in the greater Victoria area. It has asked companies to submit project proposals by mid-September, and it may try to locate the water plant with a power plant, as is done in Saudi Arabia, to boost efficiency and cut costs.

Officials with both Laguna Madre and Guadalupe-Blanco hope to acquire some financing from private companies. But government at all levels, from water agencies on up, will be the key player. In El Paso, the federal government contributed $26 million in grants — more than a quarter of the cost — for the desalination plant.

The Texas Water Development Board has issued $7.1 million in grants for desalination projects since 2000, according to Arroyo, the desalination specialist.

But “we don’t have any more funds for desalination,” he said. The board asked the Legislature for $9.5 million in financing for seawater desalination last session but did not get it.

Gov. Rick Perry has advocated for desalination in the past, but he has spoken little on it recently. Expanding the technology “at a cost that is affordable to consumers will be an important part of any future water plans in the state,” Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for the governor, said in an email.

Officials at the Texas Desalination Association, a new advocacy group, acknowledge that requests for money will probably fall on deaf ears. But they say that the state can help by easing regulations — for example, a requirement that every desalination project include a lengthy pilot study — and by doing more extensive mapping of Texas’ brackish water resources.

“If we eliminate some of the red tape and some of the permitting issues,” said Paul Choules, the group’s president, “it reduces a lot of the upfront cost.”

Written by Kate Galbraith@The Texas Tribune