Remediation of brackish groundwater in United Arab Emirates using electrodialysis technique

Abstract

A B S T R A C TMany Gulf countries including United Arab Emirates "UAE" suffer from major shortage of drinking water produced from natural resources. In these countries, it is essential to make use of water from underground reservoirs of different qualities. In Al Ain and, till recently, major percentage of drinking water resources had been produced from groundwater aquifers. Intensive discharge of groundwater resources in several aquifers given the limited replenishing inflows and the major percolations associated with farming activities overlying these aquifers have resulted in increasing their salt content and invalidate their usage for drinking purposes. Desalination of brackish water is a major potential way of producing low-cost drinking water. Electrodialysis, a technique based on the transport of ions through selective membranes under the influence of an electrical field, has proved its feasibility and high performance in the desalination of brackish water. In this research, the design and optimization of an electrodialysis cell for brackish water desalination of major aquifers of Al Ain City, UAE, is studied. Different laboratory experiments are conducted to analyze the sensitivities of different design parameters on the configured cell, evaluate different operational schemes of the configured cell, and select the one achieving the highest desired efficiency.