TY - JOUR
T1 - Sensitivity of hypersaline Arabian Gulf to seawater desalination plants
AU - Smith, Ronald
AU - Purnama, Anton
AU - Al-Barwani, H. H.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Sultan Qaboos University Internal Grant IG/SCI/DOMS/05/07. We are grateful to Mr. Mohammed Al-Washahi, AES Barka, Oman, for information on desalination plants in the Arabian Gulf, and to the referee for suggesting that we quantify the sensitivity of the salinity predictions.
PY - 2007/10
Y1 - 2007/10
N2 - Due to the hot, arid nature of its bordering lands, seawater in the Arabian Gulf can have significant evaporation rates leading to hypersaline conditions. If additional desalination plants were to operate along its coast, then the extraction of desalinated water and returned brine waste stream into the Gulf would increase the salinity. This paper uses a tidally and cross-sectionally averaged mathematical model that reveals multiplicative dependence of the salinity on factors associated with river flow, evaporation rates and each of the desalination plants. Present-day desalinated water production rates are in the linear regime, but hypersalinity has exponential sensitivity to the position and volumetric rate of desalinated water extraction.
AB - Due to the hot, arid nature of its bordering lands, seawater in the Arabian Gulf can have significant evaporation rates leading to hypersaline conditions. If additional desalination plants were to operate along its coast, then the extraction of desalinated water and returned brine waste stream into the Gulf would increase the salinity. This paper uses a tidally and cross-sectionally averaged mathematical model that reveals multiplicative dependence of the salinity on factors associated with river flow, evaporation rates and each of the desalination plants. Present-day desalinated water production rates are in the linear regime, but hypersalinity has exponential sensitivity to the position and volumetric rate of desalinated water extraction.
KW - Arabian Gulf
KW - Hypersaline
KW - Seawater desalination
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U2 - 10.1016/j.apm.2006.09.010
DO - 10.1016/j.apm.2006.09.010
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:34247267057
SN - 0307-904X
VL - 31
SP - 2347
EP - 2354
JO - Applied Mathematical Modelling
JF - Applied Mathematical Modelling
IS - 10
ER -