RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has established itself as a global leader in the rapidly advancing water desalination market, doubling its production capacity, while developing new technology to repurpose the harmful byproduct of the process — brine.

While desalination is effective for achieving water sustainability, producing drinking water from sea water in arid regions, it leaves behind a highly concentrated saline fluid. If this brine is disposed of back into the sea without treatment, it poses a potential danger to  marine ecosystems.

Simply put, brine is highly concentrated seawater that contains contaminants, including chemicals used during the desalination process.

“The chemicals should be all neutralized,” said Noreddine Ghaffour, a research professor at the Water Desalination and Reuse Center at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

He told Arab News that “there is no reason to dump chemicals into the sea, because they are all negatively affecting marine life, including chlorine and antiscalants.”

Water desalination scientists in Saudi Arabia have developed technologies to neutralize chemicals in brine before discharge and to disperse salt over a radius of up to 2 km when reintroduced into the sea.

Ghaffour, who was granted Saudi citizenship for his work and expertise on desalination, said that researchers and industry experts believe the future of the process is in recovering minerals, while treating the brine and achieving zero liquid discharge.

While around 70 percent of Earth is covered in water, only 2.5 percent of it is fresh, of which 1 percent is easily accessible, according to the National Geographic website.

Water desalination separates salt ions from sea water to make it safe for consumption. Salinity levels vary by body of water; for example, the Red Sea has 40 grams of salt per liter, while the Arabian Gulf’s salinity is 45 grams per liter.

The three main water desalination technologies employed in Saudi Arabia are: multi-stage flash distillation, a thermal process using evaporation and condensation; multiple-effect distillation, which uses electrical energy to break down water ions; and reverse osmosis, which separates water molecules through a semipermeable membrane.

All three technologies produce brine, but reverse osmosis plants generate lower quantities compared with the other two methods.

Reverse osmosis, according to Ghaffour, uses a method called membrane separation, where osmotic pressure is overcome by a semipermeable membrane that filters out salt ions, allowing only water molecules to pass through.

Ghaffour explained that although the semipermeable membrane effectively filters out about 99 percent of salts, some still manage to pass through, producing brine.

Moreover, osmotic pressure — the force applied to a solution to prevent a solvent from passing through a semipermeable membrane — requires a lot of electrical energy.

“Electricity is one of the most expensive energy forms… the main problem with (reverse osmosis) is that we do this under pressure,” the KAUST professor said.

He added: “The more salt, the higher the osmotic pressure. In order to pass only water molecules through the membrane, we need to apply a pressure which is higher than the osmotic pressure.

“And the osmotic pressure in Red Sea water, for instance, is 30 bar… so we need a pressure higher than 30 bar, which is a very high pressure.”

He also explained that “recovery” refers to “how much water we recover from the sea,” adding that “if the recovery is 50 percent, this means that salt contents are doubled.”

Ghaffour said selecting the correct location for a desalination plant is highly important. Authorities must choose sites with a reliable water intake that will not disrupt marine ecosystems or impact densely populated areas.

According to the UN Environment Programme, unless waste water is properly treated and dispersed, it may form a dense plume of toxic brine, which can degrade coastal and marine ecosystems. 

Increased salinity and temperature can reduce dissolved oxygen levels and contribute to the formation of “dead zones” — areas where few marine species can survive.

Ghaffour said that while brine is bad for the environment, it has not caused significant global environmental harm. Over the past 30 to 40 years, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region have experienced few negative side-effects from the desalination process, he said.

Concern over waste water from desalination returning to the sea at a higher temperature is less of an issue with the reverse osmosis method, Ghaffour said. “We have the same temperature as sea water, maybe one degree more, which is affordable.”

Researchers are determined to achieve zero liquid discharge, which involves treating brine until only solids remain. However, this process also concentrates all the salts in the same place.

To remove salt ions from brine, a complex and costly process called mineral recovery is used.

The challenge in mineral recovery lies in the fact that high-value minerals, such as lithium, rubidium, and uranium, are present in brine at very low concentrations. 

To make the process efficient and economically viable, further technological advancements are needed. 

Currently, “there are no technologies to handle this huge volume,” Ghaffour said. “We are talking about huge volumes of water, like 1 million tons of water (recovered) every day, it’s higher than a river.”

Several technologies have been developed for mineral recovery on a smaller scale. One method involves chemical treatments that precipitate different salts in stages, starting with calcium carbonate and ending with lithium.

Another mineral recovery method involves the use of ion exchange membranes or absorbents designed to capture specific minerals, such as lithium.

One of the largest areas of current research is the magnesium hydroxide family, particularly for its applications in the cement and concrete industry. 

Saudi Arabia is already using nanofiltration technology to produce magnesium from magnesium-rich waters, with the next step being the extraction of magnesium hydroxide for cement production.

Expensive and critical minerals like rubidium — which costs around $3,000 per kilo — as well as uranium and lithium, are of great interest, but are costly to extract due to their low concentrations, requiring significantly more energy in the process. 

From a commercial perspective, businesses prefer to purchase lithium from produced water — a byproduct of oil and gas production — rather than from brine. 

Brine can also be repurposed to enhance the efficiency of the desalination process. Due to its high osmotic potential, brine can be used for energy production.

Ghaffour said that several companies are utilizing reverse electrodialysis to generate energy, which is then used to power the reverse osmosis process. 

In addition, to achieve a circular carbon economy, reverse electrodialysis can be combined with brine dilution for mineral recovery, allowing part of the brine to be reused in an efficient closed-loop system.

“This is what I call a seawater factory,” Ghaffour said. “We take seawater and we produce everything from seawater without polluting back. 

“Many experts are saying that in the future, desalinated water, which is what we need most, will itself be a byproduct, because we will have so many more valuable products from the sea. Then this desalinated water will be just one of the byproducts.”

However, he believes that turning this vision into reality will take time.

“We have to distinguish between two things. One is science and the second one is technology scale-up.”

In September 2024, Lihytech, a KAUST startup, announced a partnership with Aramco to strategically collaborate on recovering lithium from oilfield brines using direct lithium extraction technology and a membrane developed at KAUST. 

Ghaffour is also collaborating with a Singaporean company, MediSun Energy, to integrate desalination with energy and mineral production, aiming to optimize these processes as a whole. A pilot facility has already been installed in China, with plans for another installation in Saudi Arabia. 

“The whole world is working on this (mineral recovery and optimizing desalination). We will see a lot of developments in this, in my opinion,” he said.
 

RIYADH: What does video gaming and the orchestra have in common? Collaboration, immersive experiences, and the art of storytelling at its finest.

The world-renowned Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra spoiled guests with two nights of concerts powered by Qiddiya Gaming at Princess Nourah University’s Red Hall on Thursday and Friday.

Producer and director of Final Fantasy XIV Naoki Yoshida and renowned sound editor and composer Masayoshi Soken took the opportunity to introduce themselves to a full house of fans, wearing traditional Saudi thobes.

Arab News had the opportunity to interview Yoshida, Soken, senior story designer Natsuko Ishikawa, and localization supervisor Michael-Christopher Koji Fox.

Yoshida expressed his gratitude toward the game’s loyal fans in the Middle East, saying: “I’m really appreciative of the fans in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia that have loved the Final Fantasy franchise.

“We are finally here to give back to the community that’s loved us and supported us for so long. To be able to bring them the excitement, we are bringing them sound and music.

“We don’t envision this as the end; we envision this as something that’s going to connect us into the future.”

In the first part of the concert, the orchestra performed works like “Victory Fanfare” and “Moebius.”

In order to give gamers a true gaming experience, Soken had the idea of creating the same in-game pause during the orchestra’s performance to reflect the battle in the game.

Soken said: “During that battle, there’s an in-game mechanic where time stops and the player stops, so when playing that song in concert we want the players to feel like that in music; the game experience and their memories of the game are connected in that way.

“We wanted to figure out a way to recreate that time stop while being played in the concert by an orchestra. So the idea we came up with is if time stops in the game, how about making the concert stop?”

Soken’s idea was turned into reality and the crowd was in awe as the orchestra paused for a few seconds.

In charge of creating graphics and videos, Ishikawa said her job was about picking scenes that resonated with the players.

She said: “What we created here feels like it was created by the Final Fantasy development team, even though it’s a concert.”

Unlike a typical concert, in which each song evokes different emotions to each individual, Soken said gaming concerts created a joint emotional experience.

Soken said: “With a game concert, everyone is experiencing the same thing because they experienced the same game, so everyone shares that excitement.”

More than 100 musicians traveled from Japan, accompanied by vocalists, to bring the soundtrack from Final Fantasy XIV to life.

Soken said: “We know that Saudi Arabia and Japan have a long history of friendly collaboration but there has not been a lot with music, and there’s probably been nothing with gaming music.

“The people that experience (the concert) will be able to go home and tell their friends how exciting an experience it was and how these people from Japan brought this great thing that we have never seen before.”

The event also offered fans a dedicated merchandise area featuring exclusive items and other products shipped directly from Tokyo.

Diamond ticket holders also had the opportunity to meet Yoshida, Soken, Ishikawa, and Fox, receiving a signed poster and photo.

With over 30 million total registered players, Final Fantasy XIV is one of the most popular MMORPG games today, while Qiddiya, which was launched in 2018 under the leadership of King Salman, is an emerging capital for entertainment, sports and culture that aims to enhance the quality of life of visitors and residents.