Understanding the phenomenon of saltwater intrusion sourced from desalination plants at coastal aquifers

Abstract

Members of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates rely on desalination to produce water for domestic use. Desalination produces brine that may intrude into the aquifers to pollute the fresh groundwater because of the concentration gradient and groundwater pumping. Modeling the trends of saltwater intrusion needs theoretical understanding and thorough logical experimentation. The objective of this exercise was to understand the phenomenon of saltwater intrusion using an existing set of data analyzed with the convective–diffusion equation and the two-region mobile–immobile solution model.