PhD candidate Riaan van der Merwe, an Environmental Science student in the Water Desalination and Reuse Center, under Prof. Gary Amy and Dr. Sabine Lattemann, has published a significant review of national environmental regulations in the Kingdom, as related to the environmental impacts of desalination practices. Riaan presented the paper at the recent International Conference on Desalination for the Environment, Clean Water and Energy, in Barcelona, Spain, and it has subsequently been published on Taylor & Francis online.
Riaan’s research, under the WDRC’s strategic research theme of seawater/brackish water desalination, includes generating scientific results on possible environmental impacts, assessing changes in population diversity specific to marine microorganisms and benthic communities in areas near to seawater desalination plants.
Having worked for four years as a Senior Environmental Consultant in Al Khobar, Riaan is committed to seeing a sustainable water future in the Kingdom. This paper, primarily a review of desalination practices and governance in the Kingdom with a focus on regulations controlling the discharge of concentrates into aquatic environments, identifies the important role that research centers, such as KAUST’s WDRC, play in providing scientific data to minimize the environmental impacts of desalination plants.
Research like this could be a first step in establishing a framework to ensure the environmental sustainability of the desalination technologies and operations of the future.