An Analysis of Renewable Water Sources in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is located in a very harsh natural desert environment with no riv- ers or lakes and an average yearly rainfall of less than 100 mm. The country is under extreme wa- ter shortage conditions. KSA utilizes conventional (natural) and unconventional water resources to satisfy the ever increasing water demand. The purpose of this paper is to analyze two ap- proaches to obtaining fresh water from renewable water resources, namely they are seawater dis- tillation using solar energy and gathering liquid water from fog. In order to conduct the study for seawater distillation a solar still basin has been designed, manufactured and tested in selected day for saline water in month of April, 2012. The solar still consists of insulated metal box with chan- nels. Pyramidal glass covers attached to the basin at an angle (=45˚), and the basin area of the still is 0.25 m2 and filled with 6 liters of seawater. The average daily output was found to be 3.924 li- ters/day. Further, to harvesting water from fog a Standard Fog Collector (SFC) was designed and manufactured in Asir region with locally available materials and imported mesh. This SFC was in- stalled in April 2012. The site was chosen based on topography and altitude and data from April 2012 to March 2013 were obtained. Measurements with the SFC were made for region with 3200 m elevation. The results indicate that the average water production was 6.225 L/(m²∙day) over the studied period and the highest average water production was recorded in December 11.20 L/(m²∙day). The highest water collection was 20 L/(m²∙day) and recorded in Jan. 05, 2013 at Rayda site, and furthermore for the same site, the best average water production of 10.52 L/(m²∙day) was obtained in winter three months period namely (December, November and Janu- ary).