Desertification is defined by the UN as the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas. The definition is simple, but the impact of desertification is profound, and it is affecting communities around the globe. This transformation ranks desertification as a major environmental challenge of our time. Given this significance, it is surprising this phenomenon is mostly unheralded and misunderstood.
The UN holds The World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought every June, helping to raise awareness of this problem. The phenomenon is not new and is in recorded history as a cause for the demise of several early civilizations. Yet, the UN estimates that the pace of arable land degradation is estimated at 30 to 35 times historical rates.*
One misconception around desertification is that it is merely the expansion of existing deserts. However, this is not the case. Desertification takes place when dryland ecosystems, which cover over one-third of the world’s land area, are overexploited by human actions such as unsustainable farming, mining, overgrazing, and clear-cutting of land. The number of people that will be affected by desertification is high, with the UN predicting that over 50 million people may be displaced within the next 10 years because of desertification.**
Combating the threat of desertification
One of the key actions to combat desertification is water management — saving, reuse of treated water, rainwater harvesting, desalination, or direct use of seawater for salt-loving plants, as well as re-injection in the system after a new treatment. ABB has solutions that span the entire value chain of water.
The availability of clean water, especially for regions in which fresh water is not readily available through groundwater or freshwater sources such as rivers and lakes, often requires water production via saline water sources.
When it comes to supplying potable water, using a desalination process —- supplying from saline water sources such as seawater —- is a key solution that has an essential role in closing the gap between supply and demand. With 98 per cent of the planet’s water stored in the salty seas, desalination surely is going to have an essential role as the global population continues to increase.
The challenges of desalination
Three technologies are utilized for the desalination process: Reverse Osmosis (RO), Multi Stage Flash (MSF) and Multi Effect Distillation (MED). In some cases, they can be combined in a hybrid solution. There are several significant challenges for operators of desalination plants, but they can be encompassed within the two key areas of energy efficiency and operational effectiveness.
Our water supply and demand situation are worsened or relieved by how well we understand and utilize the water–energy nexus. Simply put, we are using too much water to make energy, and too much energy to deliver water.
Whilst desalination is a promising remedy for water shortages, it is also an energy-hungry process. The energy required to run desalination plants can comprise at least 20 per cent and often as much as half of the overall operational costs of desalination.
Energy efficiency in the water cycle is, therefore, a significant factor in terms of optimizing the process of water generation through any technology, whether it is MSF, RO or MED. ABB’s approach to energy efficiency has three pillars: The first pillar is the constant development of highly efficient products such as transformers and motors that highly contribute to a plant electricity bill. The second pillar is accurate energy audits and advice for plant modifications to help the overall energy footprint, including using a Variable Frequency Drive to control the process. The final and perhaps the most important pillar is the exploitation of the full potential of Industry 4.0 through dedicated digital solutions that optimize the process by identifying the optimal operational points, giving operators insights to make immediate operational decisions (e.g. taking equipment into service or out of service to provide the same production levels, but with less energy).
In the area of operational effectiveness, ABB’s solutions reduce operational and maintenance costs and extend the life of assets through condition-based maintenance aimed at maintaining optimum plant performance and minimising maintenance costs. When applied to one of the most critical pieces of equipment in a reverse osmosis plant, the membranes, the condition of the membranes can be chosen, rather than production volumes or time, as a main parameter to decide the regeneration point. The solutions are modular and can be scaled up from equipment level to plant level and even at a network level.
Water cycle expertise in action
It is all well and good having the tools and knowledge, but the real test is in having solutions out in the field that help realize potential. ABB has delivered instrumentation, automation and electrical solutions for some of the largest and most complex desalination projects around the world.
One such project was at the Magtaa desalination plant in the western Oran region of Algeria, where ABB supplied a turnkey electrical solution to power what was, at the time, the world's largest membrane-based reverse osmosis seawater desalination plant. This plant has a designated capacity of 500,000m³ per day of drinking water to serve about five million people. The project is part of the Algerian Government's efforts to provide clean drinking water to its growing population.
ABB was responsible for the design, engineering, supply, installation, and commissioning of the electrical plant system, which included constructing a 220kV outdoor substation to provide power to the facility and supply products such as power transformers, medium-voltage drives and a range of medium and low-voltage switchgear.
ABB’s role did not finish with the plant’s commissioning, with a continued involvement in helping maximize operational efficiency by minimizing downtime and optimizing energy efficiency through ABB’s service offering, including ABB AbilityTM digital solutions.
Another excellent example of our solutions for the complete water cycle came at the Jeddah Reverse Osmosis Desalination Plant Phase 1 in Saudi Arabia. This seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant has a capacity of 48,848m³/day and was initially commissioned 20 years ago. When the existing obsolete distributed control system needed to be upgraded, a solution was delivered based on ABB Ability™ Symphony® Plus, ABB’s flagship automation system for water and power. This was seamlessly integrated with the existing plant management system. An additional benefit to the customer was that ABB’s experienced team minimized downtime and ensured a short delivery and commissioning time, with the plant only shut down for ten days.
In Saudi Arabia, ABB has supplied a distributed control system (DCS) using ABB's state-of-the-art digital technology for the Yanbu Reverse Osmosis Desalination Plant RO-1. The seawater RO plant is made up of six trains of about 2.2 MGD capacity each. The plant consists of five major components: a seawater supply system, a feed water pre-treatment system, high-pressure pumping, RO modules, and a permeate post-treatment system.
Just across the border, in Oman, ABB helped develop one of the largest reverse osmosis plants in the Gulf. Oman is a region that has 80 per cent of its land mass as desert, and with a growing population, had an increasing demand for drinking water. The Al Ghubra plant has a potable water production capacity of 191,000m³ per day, equivalent to supplying a population of 800,000 people using RO. Within a year of starting operation, operators at the plant met the increasing demand for drinking water, which is currently at around 827,000m³ per day. This figure is expected to increase at an average rate of six per cent annually in the coming years.
Looking to the future
As the water industry moves into a digital age, instrumentation must become so much more than process control, and instead focus on the importance of integrating data. Customers want control systems to be able to ‘talk’ to maintenance management systems, modelling and planning systems, and ERP systems, with flexibility for SCADA solutions to not only to tell about generation, but then go downstream and connect to systems handling transmission networks. ABB is focused on customers, and meeting these needs, as it writes the future of safe and smart operations as a digital leader.
To identify, analyze and cater to consumer behaviour and demand patterns, it is imperative operators have an integrated system that brings in the data from the distribution network so that economic points of dispatch can be found. This enables real-time adjustments to be made to systems, helping identify optimal sources of generation and points of operation.
ABB operates across the entire water cycle, from water production and treatment, through transmission, distribution, water reuse, and irrigation. ABB technologies are aimed at optimizing the process, reducing operation and maintenance costs, minimizing energy consumption, and then improving plant productivity and reliability. Close collaboration with customers is prioritized and valued, with ABB taking water from the source and making it fit for consumption through desalination or other treatment processes. At ABB, embodying digital leadership includes striving to find innovative solutions that help bridge the gaps between supply and demand of this most valuable resource.
