Accelerating the Impacts of Solar Driven MOF Adsorption System for Water Desalination and Cooling in Egypt

Summary

Egypt has arid climate, scarce rainfall and temperature reaching 450C. The 55 billion m3/year Nile quota is 90% of Egypt’s overall water resources leading to around 570m3/capita/year almost 50% below the international line of 1000m3. Egypt’s population will reach 112million by 2024; leading to the “absolute scarcity” threshold of 500m3/capita/year. Also, electricity demand is steadily increasing with residential sector consumes 42% due to air conditioning during hot weather. In line with Egypt vision 2030 Egyptian government plans to double the country dairy products and install 100000 greenhouses in order to reach food self-sufficiency.

Clean and affordable water and cooling are essential for food security in Egypt through enhancing agriculture and animal production particularly from greenhouses and dairy farms and reducing milk and agriproduct losses. The British Council Newton Mushrafa has funded a collaborative project between Birmingham University and Alexandria University to develop a novel solar driven adsorption desalination and cooling system using Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) adsorbent material (id 216418549, 2016-2018).

This project aims to build on the success of the earlier one and accelerate its impacts through developing a near market, efficient and commercially competitive solar driven MOF adsorption (AD) system for production of water and cooling and demonstrate it at the Agricultural Department of Alexandria University (AU).

This will encourage Egyptian stakeholders to invest in this novel technology leading to major social and economic impacts within the next 5-10 years in terms of gender equality, social inclusion, poverty reduction and food security. Egypt is in the Lower Middle Countries on the DAC list and ranking 116 on the Human Development index.

This project helps to realise UN SDGs on access to clean and affordable water (6.1), provision of clean (solar) and affordable energy (7.1 & 7.2), and promote well-being for all ages/genders (3).

Project objectives

  1. develop a near market, efficient and commercially competitive solar driven MOF adsorption desalination and cooling system to be a technology demonstrator at a greenhouse in the department of agriculture, AU.
  2. carry out a technology transfer program to develop a supply chain of Egyptian industries capable of manufacturing the proposed technology leading to commercial exploitation.
  3. develop an electronic platform (EP) for the design and scale up of the proposed technology for various applications.
  4.  carry out capacity building by training engineers, academics and business leaders on this technology.
  5. develop a comprehensive marketing plan including publications, leaflets, seminars, teaching material and workshops to inform stakeholders of this technology potential advantages.
  6. accelerate the impact of this technology on gender equality and social inclusion through data collection, preparing educational material and disseminating it through leaflets, workshops and family visits.