| 14 Apr 2010 |
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Saudi Arabia taps into solar energy for water security
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Wednesday, Apr 14, 2010
Gulf News
Riyadh Water desalination is an indispensable strategic choice for the supply of drinking water in Saudi Arabia, Prince Dr Turki Bin Saud Bin Mohammad Al Saud, vice-president of King Abdulaziz City for Science and TechnologyKing Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology
(KACSTKACST), said yesterday.
After opening a conference in Riyadh on water desalination in Arab countries, Prince Turki observed that the national policy of science and technology has accorded paramount importance to research on technologies for producing clean water and energy.
He pointed out that KACSTKACST had developed nanotechnology applications for water desalination and solar energy in cooperation with IBM. A joint research team had come up with advanced technologies that had significantly offset the cost of producing solar energy and desalinating water, he said. Specially designed solar cells were aiding water desalination operations, he added.
He said the national initiative on water desalination driven by solar energy, a scheme sponsored by King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz, would be implemented in three phases within a time frame of nine years.
The first phase, implementation of which has already begun, envisages construction of a desalination plant with a capacity of 30,000 cubic metres per day. This is to be achieved through the construction of a solar energy plant with a capacity of 10 megawatts over a three-year period.
The second phase aims to build a water desalination plant powered by solar energy that would boast a production capacity of 300,000 cubic metres per day over a period of three years.
The third phase will involve construction of several water desalination plants for different regions of the kingdom.
He added that technologies enabling the initiative would help lower the cost per cubic metre of water by 25 per cent.
By Abdul Rahman Shaheen
© Gulf News 2010. All rights reserved.
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