Cyprus Mail 12 February 2025 - by Iole Damaskinos
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| Dhekelia desalination plant |
A solution to the island’s water scarcity has been proposed through a European Union funded project that optimises the production of desalinated water, it emerged on Wednesday.
Under the title “Mining Water” the project promises to reduce costs and increase the rates of desalinated water production, while converting wasted byproducts from the technology into industrial raw materials.
Assistant Professor Dimitris Xevgenos, an expert on circular water systems presented the project’s particulars to Cypriot journalists at Delft University of Technology on Tuesday, through an initiative of the Dutch Embassy.
The concept which has been under exploration for at least ten years in Australia and elsewhere, was presented last November to relevant stakeholders in Nicosia.
While seventy per cent of the island’s drinking water relies on desalination, the technology is costly and large volumes are lost as brine, an unavoidable byproduct, that could instead be utilised, Xevgenos told the Cyprus News Agency (CNA).
Last month officials had announced imminent tenders for a number of additional desalination plants on the island amid an escalating water crisis.
Currently, five permanent desalination plants pump out 235,000 m3 of water daily to cover the island’s drinking supply in Dhekelia, Larnaca, Vasiliko, Episkopi and Paphos.
Brining of the seawater within the radius of a desalination plant where it is commonly dumped, requires expensive piping systems and also has negative effects on the biodiversity of the surrounding marine environment.
The basic idea behind the “Mining Water” project is to turn the highly concentrated brine into derivatives useful for industry, including sodium hydroxide [caustic soda, also known as lye].
Sodium hydroxide is not the only product that could be made from the waste brine. Another chemical used by desalination plants is hydrochloric acid, which could also be made on site from the brine, using established chemical processing methods.
Hydrochloric acid may be used for cleaning parts of the plant but is also widely used as a source of hydrogen.
The project’s executive coordinator said that recouping the brine for other uses reduces the desalinations plants’ energy footprint and opens the path for more water to be produced through this method for drinking as well as irrigation.
The positive results of the technology had already been presented in Italy, on the island of Lampedusa, which depends 100 per cent on desalination, and where it is currently being evaluated for implementation, Xevgenos said.
The EU project is funded by Horizon 2030, with a total of 39 partners including the Cyprus water development department and the Larnaca sewerage board.
It is to be assessed on an EU-wide basis before being put on track for implementation in Vasiliko, CNA reported. Tendering and management procedures are still pending.
