Numerical modeling of brine disposal from Gaza central seawater desalination plant

Gaza central seawater desalination plant is a promising solution to alleviate the problem of water crisis in the Gaza Strip. The plant in the short term, phase (I), will desalinate seawater for potable uses with a capacity of 55 million cubic meters per year, while in the long term, phase (II), the plant capacity will be doubled to 110 million cubic meters per year of freshwater. As a product from the reverse osmosis process, a huge amount of brine with salinity reaches to 75,000 mg/L will be redirected to seawater; nearly 12,200 m3/h of brine will be rejected from phase (I) while in the long term, a brine flow rate of 24,400 m3/h will be disposed from phase (II). In order to minimize the negative impacts of the rejected brine on the marine environment, it is urgent to modeling numerically the impact of the discharged brine through various disposal systems to define the most environmental system. Various scenarios were defined and simulated using CORMIX model to study the efficiencies of onshore surface open channel, offshore submerged single port as well as offshore submerged multiport outfalls taking salinity variations as an indicator. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to identify the most influencing input parameters on the simulation results as well as to evaluate the optimal environmental disposal system which can mitigate the adverse impacts of brine on the marine ecosystem as much as possible in the worst seawater conditions. The simulation results showed that the discharge via surface open channel is not environmentally feasible where the seawater salinity rose by more than 2000 mg/L at RMZ. The single-port scenario can meet the regulations at RMZ but the standard at GMZ was not met, where the rejected brine from phase (I) through single port at 1500 m offshore raises the seawater salinity at GMZ by more than 600 mg/L. The staged multiport outfall, capped by 24 ports, achieves acceptable brine dilution at seawater depth of about 7.5 m, and in the worst ambient conditions in the case of phase (II) in operation, the brine’s excess salinity was 536, 497, and 379 mg/L above the salinity of seawater at RMZ, GMZ, and ROI, respectively.