Introduction
This report discusses water purification in Saudi Arabia. Presently, water purification has become one of the essential activities not only in Saudi Arabia but everywhere. This report mainly focuses on different activities carried out in Saudi Arabia for water purification. It is very important to provide good drinking water to all whether it is for private or public. “Water purification generally means freeing water from any kind of impurity it contains, such as contaminants or microorganisms.” (What is Water Purification? para 1).
The main aim of this activity is to remove all kinds of contamination present in the water and make it secure and appetizing for human consumption. To accomplish this task, Saudi Arabia is concentrating on placing more purification plants in various parts of the country. Saudi Arabia is also concentrating to improve the existing facility to make everything more efficient.
The specific purpose of this report is to familiarize different methods of water purification which are used in Saudi Arabia. These include methods like distillation, reverse osmosis, microporous filtration, etc. The scope of this report is to bring out all sorts of features used for water purification in Saudi Arabia and their effectiveness in providing pure water in all regions of Saudi Arabia.
As mentioned earlier, the focus of this report is the purification of water in Saudi Arabia. The body section of the report covers everything about water purification activities taking place in Saudi Arabia. This section covers the entire description of the different types of processes involved in purification of water. This section also mentions some companies which are actively involved in this activity of providing purified water and about different processes undertaken in their companies for purification of water.
The History of Water in Saudi Arabia
According to a survey conducted by the Saudi Arabian Central Department of statistics, it is expected that by 2010 population of Saudi Arabia will exceed 29 million. According to this survey, water consumption will raise approximately up to 300 liters per day. This results from a huge demand for water for coming years.
CEO of National Water Company mentions the development needed in the purification activity in order to satisfy or to fulfill everyone’s needs. CEO mentions that companies need to check their infrastructure regularly in order to compete with the requirements of the people of Saudi Arabia.
Also, many new plans are implementing in Saudi Arabia in both the private and public sectors in order to have effective water purification in their country.
The Main Methods of Water Purification
Around three-fourth part of the earth is water, and out of this, the major portion is in the brackish sea. As this water contains more amount of salt, it cannot be used for drinking, because it may cause various diseases. If human beings drink only salty water they will die very soon. Due to this salty water, there was a scarcity of drinking water in Saudi Arabia. So, the people of this country found various methods for the purification of water.
Desalination
What is desalination?
Desalination is a method to purify the sea water. “Saudi Arabia is now the world’s largest producer of desalinated water with desalination meeting 70% of the country’s present drinking water requirement and supplying major urban and industrial centers through a network of water pipes which run for more than 2,300 miles.” (Shoaiba Desalination Plant, Saudi Arabia para 6).
Al-Jubail in Saudi Arabia has a desalination plant where the desalination process is done on a large scale. The purification of sea water helps to fulfill the water requirements of people to a great extent. The desalination process helps in removing excess minerals and salt from water and thus makes it suitable for human consumption. Desalination is a major method of providing drinking water to the people in Saudi Arabia. Many new plants are under construction in the country. A mega plant for water desalination and power generation is being planned to set up in Saudi Arabia. Electricity can be produced from the desalination plants. The process of desalination is very expensive.
Procedure of desalination
In this method, the sea water is purified by boiling the water in a container and the vapor generated while boiling is collected in a cool pot. When the vapor rises up it will leave the salt in the water. The vapor condenses into clean water when it is cooled in the pot.
The other way of distillation process is Solar distillation. In this method, the water is collected in a thin container and it is enclosed with a sheet of glass. The water basin is exposed to sun rays and when the sunlight passes through the glass sheet, the water gets heated. When the vapor rises up, it will hit the bottom of the glass sheet and vapor is condensed from there. The clean water goes into the pot which is kept aside. Solar distillation method is very cost effective and easiest method for receiving pure water.
Ecologically Elegant – Solar Stills (Christa).
One of the most commonly used methods of desalination is the multi-stage flash (MSF) distillation process. This method is used by most of the modern distillation plants. This process requires large amount of heat and consumes a high amount of electricity. Boling and condensation activities are done in the MSF distillation process. In this process, seawater is heated first in a brine heater which then flows to a large low-pressure chamber. Some of the water in the chamber is converted into steam due to the low pressure which is then condensed into water free of salt. There are many chambers for distillation through which the sea water passes. The previous chamber has high pressure than the next chamber. The water obtained finally is very pure.
Vapor compression distillation can also be used for purification of water. In this process, the compression of vapor produces heat for water evaporation. A source of mechanical energy has to be provided. At first, the sea water is heated then it is boiled in tubes. The vapor produced is then compressed and it is then directed back to the tubes where condensation is done. The heat for boiling is provided from here. The gases which do not condense are removed. A compressor is required for this process.
Multi-effect distillation (MED) is another method by which water can be purified. In this method, the condensation of the first evaporator is done in the second evaporator and the water in the second evaporator boils due to the heat of condensation. The temperature and pressure in each evaporator are different. Low pressure should be maintained in the first evaporator vapor space. The pipes with condensing steam and the pipes with boiling sea water have to keep a logical heat exchange between them. The condensing steam should have a higher temperature than sea water. The pure water is carried through the pumps. The air and non-condensing gases are removed through the steam ejector. As the stages increase, the amount of pure water produced per unit also increases.
The Modern Methods of Water Purification
Reverse osmosis
What is reverse osmosis?
Hyperfilteration is another name for reverse osmosis. This method is one of the finest filtration existing at present. This method is very much effective in removing contaminants present in water. Reverse osmosis has some advantages over distillation process.
Procedure of reverse osmosis
In osmosis, a concentrated solution and dilute solution are separated from each other by a semi permeable membrane. The concentration difference on both sides causes the flow of water from the dilute region to concentrated region. If a pressure more than the osmotic pressure is applied to the high concentration region, reverse osmosis takes place. Then the direction of flow of water through osmosis is reversed and water flows from concentrated region to dilute region. This is called reverse osmosis. This method has good purification efficiency and also improves the quality of water.
Electro dialysis
What is electro dialysis?
Electro dialysis method is mainly used to purify the salt water in the estuaries. In this process, a big compartment is used which is alienated into several sections by a heap of membranes. It uses two kinds of the membrane, in which positive ions pass through one membrane and negative ions pass through the other so that the compartment lying on one end has positive electrode and the compartment lying on the other end has negative electrode.
Procedure of electro dialysis
While a current passes through the water, negative ions moves towards the positive electrode through the membrane. Same way, the positive ions move towards the negative electrodes through the membrane which allowed the passing of the positive ions. As a result, the salt is drained off from all compartments except the end compartments. Thus, clean water is produced from salt water.
Micro porous filtration
What is Micro porous filtration?
The other method is micro porous filtration which does water purification by a micro filter. This filter has membranes so that bacteria or viruses cannot enter through it. So, this membrane is very essential for water purification.
Procedure of Micro porous filtration
The micro filter placed in a container catches the pollutants and poisons them in the water when the water flows through it. There is also a sub micron filter which does the final filtration of water. This filter removes microorganisms in the decontaminated water incessantly. As it does the filtration process continuously, there is no chance of reentering of bacteria in water. It is the best method of acquiring pure water.
Conclusion
This paper has described everything about water purification in Saudi Arabia. Paper starts with very short description of water purification. Then analysis of the situation has been made about usage of water in Saudi Arabia. After that various techniques or different types of processes used for water purification in plants of Saudi Arabia are also mentioned in this paper. This includes description of different types of methods used for water purification. All these show the importance of water and its purification which is very much required for consumption.
Recommendation
As a recommendation, these plants of Saudi Arabia must be well aware about the advancement of technologies which are emerging in this field. To do so, they need to build a very good strategic plan. The plan can be long term or short term according to the requirements of Saudi Arabian people. Organizations must care about the key functions and processes. Organizations must always have very good model, a best regulatory committee must be placed in order to measure the quality of the purified water. Another important obsession is companies must expand their branches to other parts of Saudi Arabia also; it is because, as mentioned earlier, by 2010 demand for water will increase when population increases. Every company must keep this in mind and also they should try out new methods apart from existing methods. Also, evaluation programs must be conducted regularly in order to measure the quality. Similarly, working staff must be given training on the latest technologies. With all these, one expects more improvements in the field of water purification in Saudi Arabia.
Works Cited
Christa. The Green Team: Rain Water Harvesting III- Technicalities & the Possibility of Drinking Water. 2006. Web.
Desalination, an Expensive yet Abundant Water Source. Use Water Wisely.com, A Project of WEWAC, 2009. Web.
Shoaiba Desalination Plant, Saudi Arabia: Water Demands. Water Technology.net, 2009. Web.
What is Water Purification?. Transgalactic Limited, 2005. Web.