Strategic Research Unit (SRU) established a novel laboratory for seawater and brackish water desalination

Strategic Research Unit (SRU) of the National Water Research Center (NWRC) is developing a future vision for water desalination that can take?part?in eliminating freshwater scarcity and contribute in the Egyptian water balance. SRU has established a novel multi-functional research unit that focuses on the seawater and brackish water desalination and related areas of water desalination. The objective of the desalination research unit are as follows: enhance the different utilized desalination technologies, to improve the energy efficiency of desalination systems, reduce their environmental impacts and develop economically feasible solutions of the desalination process. In addition, the desalination research unit is used to estimate the best operational requirements for desalination process such as (energy requirements and chemical additives). It examines the low-pressure pre-filtration units, high-pressure desalination units, seawater and brackish water desalination membranes to demonstrate their performance compared to water quality goals. The desalination research unit includes a primary treatment unit that contains sand, carbon filters to remove impurities, iron and manganese, as well as contains microscopic filters for microfiltration (5 microns). It contains different sensors to measure various physical determinants such as pressure, salinity, flow discharge, temperature, vibration and energy consumed during the desalination process. All these physical determinants are measured for the raw saline water, the produced fresh water and the brine water.