TY - GEN
T1 - The Water Future of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
T2 - Short- and Medium-Term Challenges
AU - Fellows, Christopher M
AU - Al Hamzah, Ali A
PY - 2025/11/16
Y1 - 2025/11/16
N2 - Over the next few decades, over-use of groundwater is likely to place increasing pressure on the agricultural sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This will necessitate increasing application of brackish water desalination, with associated challenges in maintaining water quality and in brine disposal. While continuing technical advances have secured low-cost water for domestic and industrial use, a different set of challenges are arising due to the shift from thermal desalination to reverse osmosis as the principal desalination method. The higher total dissolved solids content in water produced by reverse osmosis presents quality challenges related to corrosivity, disinfection by-products, and boron. These can all be addressed, but in many cases significant additional expenditure will be required. In this report we consider potential future water quality issues through the light of the results of an extensive water quality assessment carried out across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2020–2022.
AB - Over the next few decades, over-use of groundwater is likely to place increasing pressure on the agricultural sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This will necessitate increasing application of brackish water desalination, with associated challenges in maintaining water quality and in brine disposal. While continuing technical advances have secured low-cost water for domestic and industrial use, a different set of challenges are arising due to the shift from thermal desalination to reverse osmosis as the principal desalination method. The higher total dissolved solids content in water produced by reverse osmosis presents quality challenges related to corrosivity, disinfection by-products, and boron. These can all be addressed, but in many cases significant additional expenditure will be required. In this report we consider potential future water quality issues through the light of the results of an extensive water quality assessment carried out across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2020–2022.
UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-00098-9
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-032-00098-9_63
DO - 10.1007/978-3-032-00098-9_63
M3 - Conference contribution
SN - 9783032000972
SN - 9783032000989
T3 - World Sustainability Series ((WSUSE))
SP - 789
EP - 804
BT - Proceeding of the International Conference Water and Food Security in the Face of Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities for Resilience (WFCC2025)
A2 - Al-Naemi, Salem
A2 - Benlamri, Rachid
A2 - Filho, Walter Leal
A2 - McDonnell, Jeffrey
A2 - Sadiq, Rehan
A2 - Moda, Haruna Musa
CY - Swithzerland
ER -