The Infrastructure Planning Department at the Urban Planning Sector of the Ministry of Municipality assigned the Chemical Engineering Department of the College of Engineering at Qatar University to carry out a project to study and investigate the effect of discharge of cooling water blowdown (CWBD) on waste water treatment plants, groundwater and surface water.
Qatar University is the national university of Qatar and considered extremely qualified to perform such studies, because of the cumulative experience of its academic and technical staff, analytical laboratories and computer modeling capabilities, which in turn has helped in obtaining practical results for the study that is based on strong scientific fundamentals. During the project implementation period, co-ordination was made with the relevant authorities that affect or are affected by the operations of the cooling water plants. The subject entities expressed their co-operation and provided the necessary support in all stages of the project including the required information available in their possession relevant to this important study, which has contributed effectively to the success of the project and its completion on time.
These entities included the Public Work Authority (Asghal), the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation Kahramaa, and Qatar Cool.
A workshop was held at the end of the project, in the presence of these entities, through which the details of the technical study were explained, and its outputs discussed. The technical report of the study was also sent to the authorities concerned for their comments.
In Qatar, district cooling plants rely on the use of treated wastewater effluent (TSE) as a water source for operation of their cooling facilities. The used TSE is also subjected to several treatments that include the addition of some chemicals. Accordingly, CWBD is considered as a wastewater stream discharged from cooling towers into the marine environment, sewage treatment plants or reused in applications such as irrigation of farms, green spaces, and public parks. Each of these discharge points have certain regulations and permissible limits for the water contaminants; the constraints are there to avoid negative and long-term consequences on the environment and society.
The study for this project consisted of two packages to investigate the impacts of wastewater discharge from district cooling plants on discharge to municipal wastewater Treatment Plant and injection into ground water aquifers and/or discharge to the sea environment.
The study was conducted by collecting and analysing water samples that were taken from the used and discharged water from district cooling plants, and studying the effect of the quality and quantities of wastewater on the discharge points. In addition, advanced mathematical modeling and simulation programmes were used in order to study the different scenarios for the impact of wastewater in the short and long term, in all discharge points, in order to obtain practical standards for discharging CWBD in the three environments.
Participants in a workshop held during the project.
