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Desalination for Agriculture: Is It Affordable?

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Biosaline Agriculture as a Climate Change Adaptation for Food Security

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Abstract

Desalination is becoming increasingly important as a solution to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region’s water problem. Many water-stressed countries in MENA are increasing their water supplies with desalination to meet the needs of the continuous growth of population and industrial, tourism, and agriculture developments. Agriculture in particular is starting to benefit from desalination technologies in some regions suffering from seawater intrusion and water and soil salinization. However, desalination presents some constraints in terms of cost, energy consumption, and brine management. In addition, solar energy is the most abundant form of renewable energy and most of the MENA countries have the potential to exploit this energy form for developing solar-driven desalination processes. Thus, membrane operations driven with renewable energy can make desalination more sustainable and environment friendly. In particular, Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination technology coupled with solar energy will supply freshwater at a competitive price and reduce the usual greenhouse impacts associated with grid electricity demand for desalination. Could desalination for agriculture become sustainable if we use renewable energies and find the right approaches to deal with the brine? This is what we try to respond to in this review.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Regional Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (RCREEE), Cairo, Egypt

    Jauad El Kharraz

  2. College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman

    Mushtaque Ahmed

  3. Institut National Agronomique de Tunis, Université de Carthage, Tunis, Tunisia

    Issam Daghari

  4. Laboratory of Advanced Materials and Process Engineering, National High School of Chemistry, Ibn Tofail University, Kenitra, Morocco

    Mourad Laqbaqbi

Authors
  1. Jauad El Kharraz
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  2. Mushtaque Ahmed
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  3. Issam Daghari
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  4. Mourad Laqbaqbi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jauad El Kharraz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Agricultural Innovation and Technologies Transfer Cernter, University Mohamed VI Polytechnic, Benguerir, Morocco

    Redouane Choukr-Allah

  2. UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, UKCEH, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, UK

    Ragab Ragab

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El Kharraz, J., Ahmed, M., Daghari, I., Laqbaqbi, M. (2023). Desalination for Agriculture: Is It Affordable?. In: Choukr-Allah, R., Ragab, R. (eds) Biosaline Agriculture as a Climate Change Adaptation for Food Security. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24279-3_16

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