Is getting safe water to drinking only the sole right of us humans? I guess most of us would say no to this. In an effort to provide safe drinking water to the animals, thirty small-scale solar-powered desalination plants will go operational in the next 15 months in Abu Dhabi. Each plant will be of the same size with identical desalination capacity of five cubic meters of water per hour. The plants that will be operated remotely will offer animals with watering holes in Abu Dhabi’s desert environment.
The main objective behind the plants is to set up a water source for the thousands of animals in the middle of the desert where there is no power. Powering the plants will be the solar energy harnessed by solar panels spanning 300 square meters at each site. It would result in producing 45 kilowatts of electricity per hour. These plants will function for nearly six to eight hours daily to desalt the salt water. The brine or wastewater will be pumped to an evaporation lake measuring between 30 to 40 meters in diameter and sealed underground to avoid any leaks into to the ground water.
There is provision for a subsurface irrigation system too that will pump some of the freshwater water back underground in order to create irrigated land to grow fodder for the animals. Two of the plants are already in use desalting brackish water from underground aquifers into fresh potable water. The daily production of desalinated water in the UAE is said to be 8.4 million cubic meters.
Via: GulfNews