Water scarcity in the Gulf remains an ongoing challenge and due to rapid growth in population levels, the challenges that these countries face are ever increasing. With low levels of annual rainfall, desalination has remained the primary source of potable water, but given the high financial and environmental costs associated with this process, water treatment and reuse must be viewed as a priority to help support the region’s needs.
Waste water is a by-product in a variety of sectors. The quality of the treated water and whether it can be reused is a fundamental problem. As with the rest of the world, approximately 70% of fresh water in the region is presently used in agricultural production. Therefore, the ability to reuse water for irrigation and human consumption would vastly reduce reliance on desalination or the limited supplies of groundwater; however, traditional waste water treatment methods fail to reduce the total dissolved solids to an acceptable level for this purpose.
When looking into wastewater collection and reuse, we should also consider the long term health impacts that are associated with antimicrobial resistance (AMR) due to the risk of spreading antibiotic–resistant bacteria through wastewater systems. In order to improve the methods to treat waste water we must also assess the role that both advanced materials and membrane technology can play in this thematic area.
With this in mind, we are organising a symposium that will focus on supporting and addressing priority areas through research and development of treatment and reuse of waste water within the following sub-topics:
- Treatment and reuse of waste water
- Improved methods to treat wastewater (eg. advanced materials membrane technology, other emerging technologies)
- Energy conversion in wastewater treatment plants
- Elimination of pollutants and hazardous substances (heavy metals, antibiotic residues and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and other contaminants)
- Management of solid waste and other by-products
- Grey water and small scale treatment
For full information about the symposium, please download the symposium's fact sheet that also includes the application form.
Please note that the application deadline is 19/1/2018