IEEE Spectrum July, 2009 - 11

1 BilliON yEArS

theoretical length of time a memory cell made from a carbon nanotube and a
nanocrystal of iron can hold data, according to researchers in Berkeley, calif.

SeA SouRce: the city of Aqaba will
get its water supply from the ocean.
photo: SANdrA upSoN

Jordan's Red Sea Desalination Plan
At the Aqaba water co., artificial intelligence saves water

F

or a small city in a water-poor
country, Aqaba got lucky. The city
of 110 000 sits on the Red Sea, on
Jordan's only coastline. Residents get their
water from 20 wells in the nearby Disi
aquifer, a store of ancient groundwater
that straddles the border with Saudi
Arabia. While the rest of Jordan makes do
with a few hours of water service a week,
Aqaba's supply is uninterrupted.
Some of that happy circumstance is
self-generated, with computer-controlled
water infrastructure and a new artificial
intelligence system that will soon manage
most of it. Now Aqaba is becoming a
linchpin in Jordan's grand water strategy.
By the end of next year, the city plans
to start building Jordan's first seawater
desalination plant, which will provide
10 million to 15 million cubic meters of
water per year, matching Aqaba's current
usage. The reverse-osmosis treatment
plant will be the first step in an ambitious
plan to build a canal to send water from
the Red Sea to the shrinking Dead Sea,
18

NA * iEEE SPEctrum * july 2009

generate hydropower on the canal, and
install another desalination facility along
the way. "Our project will be a pilot for
Jordanian engineers to gain experience
and prepare for larger desalination
projects in the future," says Imad
Zureikat, general manager of Aqaba
Water Co., the city's utility.
With investors across the Gulf
pouring money into Aqaba, the utility
expects demand to double in five
years. Business-friendly regulations
introduced in the last eight years
have begun to turn the port city into a
miniature Dubai, bringing new spikes
in water use, Zureikat says.
To meet that burgeoning demand,
the Aqaba Water Co. is implementing
new management techniques. The
utility is already a model of efficiency
for the country, if not the region. In
stark contrast to the surrounding desert,
Aqaba's verdant palm trees and grassy
patches thrive on treated wastewater,
or "gray water," distributed through a

separate network-a classic conservation
scheme that many advanced industrialized countries lack. The rate at which
water is lost through leaks or metering
failures is less than half that for the rest
of the country, which loses 43 percent of
the water entering its networks.
Naem Saleh, the water company's
technical and engineering director,
attributes the difference to the
company's move, in 2004, to implement
a supervisory control and data
acquisition (SCADA) system that reads
the network's flow characteristics every
few milliseconds. "The first thing in our
strategy was to automate and computerize
everything," Saleh says. Working with
the software company Oracle to integrate
the individual controls, the utility is now
adding artificial intelligence to react
swiftly to shifts in demand. Its decisionmaking algorithms will be trained on the
last two years of operational data. When
complete, the system will control the
pumps that fill the reservoirs and adjust
pressure levels in the pipes to match
consumption-for example, to keep the
pressure around 500 kilopascals during
the day and 200 kPa at night, when
pressure can build up and cause pipes
to burst. It would also maintain pH and
chlorine levels and, eventually, automate
the work of about 20 field technicians.
With Aqaba using mostly desalinated
water, the water in the Disi aquifer can
be preserved for Amman. A separate
project will transport the Disi water
325 kilometers uphill to Jordan's capital.
That supply will buy Jordan the time it
needs to build larger desalination plants
and truly harness the Red Sea. Nisreen
Haddadin, an engineer managing the
Ministry of Water and Irrigation's
master plan, sums it up concisely:
"This is our dream."
-Sandra Upson
This is the first in a two-part series on water
technology in the Middle East.
www.spectrum.ieee.org
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum July, 2009
