Journal of Applied Water Engineering and Research

ISSN: (Print) 2324-9676 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tjaw20

Seabed gallery intake technical feasibility for

SWRO facilities at Shuqaiq, Saudi Arabia
David Mantilla & Thomas M. Missimer
To cite this article: David Mantilla & Thomas M. Missimer (2014) Seabed gallery intake
technical feasibility for SWRO facilities at Shuqaiq, Saudi Arabia, Journal of Applied Water
Engineering and Research, 2:1, 3-12, DOI: 10.1080/23249676.2014.895686
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23249676.2014.895686

Published online: 10 Mar 2014.

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Journal of Applied Water Engineering and Research, 2014

Vol. 2, No. 1, 312, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23249676.2014.895686

Seabed gallery intake technical feasibility for SWRO facilities at Shuqaiq, Saudi Arabia
David Mantilla and Thomas M. Missimer
Water Desalination and Reuse Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal 23955-6900,
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Downloaded by [Bibliotheek TU Delft] at 00:04 17 February 2016

(Received 20 November 2013; accepted 11 February 2014 )

Surcial drainage features that allow periodic ash-ood discharges to the shallow marine environment cause operational
problems for seawater reverse osmosis water treatment plants at Shuqaiq, Saudi Arabia. The facility at Shuqaiq was designed
to produce 212,000,m3 /day of fresh water and it has experienced operational diculties. An investigation was conducted to
assess the technical feasibility of developing a subsurface intake system that would improve the feedwater quality to this and
other facilities. A seabed gallery system was found to be technically feasible to supply the required 530,000 m3 /day inow.
The design contains nine cells, each yielding 66,250 m3 /day with an inltration rate of 10 m/day. The lter would have a
hydraulic retention time of 7 h. Each cell contains ve layers with the total lter bed thickness of 5 m. Design of the lter
under-drain system was optimized to maintain an equal ow rate at the top of the lter.
Keywords: desalination; seawater reverse osmosis; membrane fouling; environmental impacts

1. Introduction
Seawater desalination has become an economically viable
technology to supply freshwater resources in water scarce
regions (Dawoud 2005). Despite the important advances
made in the last few decades in membrane design, process optimization, and energy recovery, seawater reverse
osmosis (SWRO) desalination is still a costly and energy
intensive technology (Ghaour et al. 2013). A key component of every SWRO facility is the intake which provides
the raw water supply. The most commonly used intakes
are conventional open-ocean types which include velocity
cap and coastal canal designs (Missimer 2009). Because
of the large amount of naturally occurring marine macroscopic organisms, algae, and bacteria and dissolved natural
organic matter, the use of conventional open-ocean intakes
causes the need for extensive pre-treatment of the raw feedwater that includes the use of energy intensive processes
and chemicals. The intake itself has some impact on the
environment caused by the impingement and entrainment
of sh larve and eggs (Missimer et al. 2013). Pre-treatment
chemicals, such as chlorine and ferric chloride, can also
have environmental impacts on marine life.
Entry of organic carbon into the membrane process,
including biopolymers and polysaccharides, tends to cause
membrane biofouling which necessitates frequent membrane cleaning, decreases the useful life expectancy of the
membranes and increases operational costs (Saeed et al.
Corresponding

2000; Fritzman et al. 2007; Herzberg et al. 2009). Improving

feed water quality is an eective means of reducing environmental impacts, energy demand, and cost. Commonly,
seawater desalination facilities using open-water intakes
provide feed water of low and uctuating quality, making
operation of SWRO facilities dicult and somewhat unreliable during extreme natural events, such as harmful algal
blooms (Adul Azis et al. 2000; Berktay 2011). Use of subsurface intakes can take advantage of the natural ltration
capacity of the shoreline rocks or sediment or the seabed
sediments to remove turbidity, micro-organisms, and other
organic compounds that tend to reduce the eciency of the
reverse osmosis (RO) process (Missimer 2009; Zheng et al.
2010; Shimokawa 2012).
Many subsurface intake systems, such as galleries, act
similar to slow sand lters (SSFs) used for over a century in
conventional freshwater treatment facilities. An important
issue is the potential removal of transparent exopolymeric
particles (TEP), a ubiquitous group of naturally occurring
organic compounds in marine environments that facilitate the adhesion of bacteria to the RO membrane surface
(Berman et al. 2011). Zheng et al. (2010) demonstrated that
a 50% TEP removal in SSFs could increase the operating time of ultra-ltration membranes from 12 h to 30 days
without fouling. Removal of TEP is also observed in rapid
sand ltration (one of the operational units of conventional
treatment). However, the removal rates achieved are com-

author. Email: thomas.missimer@kaust.edu.sa

Part of this paper was presented at the 2013 International World Congress of Desalination and Water Reuse, Tianjin, China, 2024 October

2013.
2014 IAHR and WCCE

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Figure 1.

D. Mantilla and T.M. Missimer

Location of Shuqaiq along the Red Sea and wadi distribution along the coastline (modied from Alharbi et al. 2012).

paratively smaller in rapid sand ltration, and the quality

of the ltered water is not stable in time (Bar-Zeev et al.
2012). Additionally, subsurface SWRO intakes such as the
Fukuoka seabed gallery in Japan are highly ecient at turbidity removal. The Fukuoka system has been operating for
about 8 years and has reliably reduced the feed water Silt
Density Index to 2.5 initially and to less than 2 during the
last few years (Shimokawa 2012).
The objective of this research is to assess the technical feasibility of constructing a seabed gallery intake for
a SWRO facility in the Shuqaiq region of Saudi Arabia.
The Shuqaiq-II IWPP facility has a production capacity of
212,000 m3 /day and is currently the largest capacity plant
located along the Red Sea coastline. The raw water quality at
the current intake is very poor and contains high concentrations of suspended solids on an irregular basis. The facility
is located near the inow points of three ephemeral streams
(wadis) (Figure 1) that periodically discharge enormous
amounts of uvial sediment into the sea, causing temporary plant shutdowns to prevent damage to the membranes.
If technically feasible, a seabed gallery intake system would
considerably improve the feedwater quality and reduce the
facility operational costs.

2.

Methodology

A survey of the coastal area of the Red Sea from Shoaiba

south to near the border with Yemen was conducted to
obtain the general characteristics of the beach and oshore
area. The area adjacent to Shuqaiq was selected for further investigation based on the geological conditions and
the existence of a large SWRO system. Field observations
were conducted in order to describe the general characteristics of the nearshore study area (e.g. coral reef and grass bed
distribution, wave activity, etc.). To establish a full hydrogeological prole, 1 km of beach south of the Shuqaiq-II IWPP
facility was surveyed (Figure 2). Ninety-one sediment samples from the shoreline and oshore were collected along 11
transects running perpendicular to the beach. Samples were
collected every 10 m along each 80 m transect (Figure 2).
Because of the proximity to the concentrate discharge for
the desalination plant, temperature, and salinity measurements of the whole study area were taken every 10 m from
the outfall parallel to the beach for a lateral distance of
200 m and then at 50 m intervals.
After collection, the sediment samples were carefully
washed with fresh water in order to remove salts without removing any ne sediment. Washed samples were

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Journal of Applied Water Engineering and Research

Figure 2.

Location of the sediment sampling site transects in relation to Shuqaiq-II IWPP site.

analyzed for hydraulic conductivity, porosity, and grain size

distribution, using standard laboratory methods (Wenzel
1942; Tanner & Balsallie 1995; ASTM 2006).
Various seabed gallery lter designs were evaluated by
assessing the natural sand hydraulic properties and a variety
of engineered subsurface sand and gravel proles. A computer program was used to calculate the head loss across
the lter for various scenarios using diering layer numbers, thicknesses, and hydraulic conductivities with variable
inltration rates. Also, an analysis was conducted to balance
the inow into the collection drain system at the base of the
gallery cells to minimize variation in the surface inltration
rate to avoid overloading the lter capacity.

3. Results
3.1. Site description
Shuqaiq is located on the Red Sea coast in the Jizan Province
of Saudi Arabia. The plant is bounded on the north by the
brine outfall of Shuqaiq-I (Figure 2), a combined power
and thermal desalination plant facility, while in the south,
the beach area extends for about 8 km until it reaches
a wadi discharge (Figure 1). Two other wadi discharge
points are located 8 and 9 km north from Shuqaiq-II. The
selected investigation area is situated on the south side of
the plant, 200 m away from the brine outow of Shuqaiq-II
(Figure 2).
The beach area at Shuqaiq is not protected by a bay or a
barrier reef, which causes the nearshore area to be aected
by strong winds and wave activity that can entrain bottom

sediments. The sediments along the seabed are mainly composed of ne siliciclastic sand, and solitary coral patches
were only found at the limits of the sampling area. The coral
ecosystem is highly impacted by the local conditions (e.g.
periodic high turbidity); sh densities were very low and
coral colonies were bleached and colonized by epiphytic
algae. No coral patches were found in the sandy sediments.
The Red Sea shoreline in this area is characterized by
shallow and extended nearshore sublittoral zones; however,
at this location the sublittoral zone exhibits a smooth slope,
reaching a water depth of 1 m at 20 m seawards of the
coastline. At this location, the shallow subtidal belt running
parallel to the beach is quite narrow compared to other areas
along the Red Sea (Dehwah & Missimer 2013; Dehwah
et al. 2013). No beachrock or marine hardgrounds occur
within the sampling area.
3.2. Water salinity and temperature
Because of the proximity of the study area to the brine
euent, water salinity and temperature of the nearshore
water were measured along 3 km of coast. Within the plant
discharge stream, the water salinity and temperature were
40.1 mg/L and 39.1 C, respectively. As soon as the water
is discharged into the ocean the temperature drops by about
5 C and ranges along the 3 km of coast from 34.5 to 36.6 C,
with an average of 35.2 C. For the salinity parameter, at the
discharge point the salinity declined by only 0.2 g/L and
similar euent salinities were found along the surveyed
area. Salinity ranged from 40.1 to 39.1 g/L, with an average
salinity of 39.8 g/L.

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D. Mantilla and T.M. Missimer

Figure 3. Hydrogeological prole of the surveyed area showing: (a) mean grain size, (b) mud distribution, (c) porosity and (d) hydraulic
conductivity. Dark areas at the corners represent zones totally covered by coralline rock where sand samples could not be collected.

3.3.

Hydrogeologic prole

The sediment mean grain diameter ranges from 0.11 to

2.82 mm, with an average of 0.48 mm (Figure 3(a)). Several
samples showed mean grain diameters signicantly higher
than the average (over 1 mm) due to the presence of skeletal debris (coral, mollusk fragments, etc.). When excluding
these samples, the sediments along the rst 20 m seawards
from the shoreline present the highest grain sizes with an
average of 0.58 mm, while past the rst 20 m oshore, the
diameters average 0.28 mm. Signicant mud content was
observed at the vicinity of the euent discharge (from T-0
to T-3) after the rst 20 m seawards from the shoreline (mud
is dened as sediment with a diameter <0.0625 mm). The
mud percentage ranged from 0.21 to 8.23, with an average of

2.27 (Figure 3(b)). Sediment samples collected along transect 1 (T-1) at 100, 150, and 200 m seawards from the coast,
showed 8.87%, 21.86%, and 22.19% mud content, respectively. This suggests higher sedimentation rates at farther
distances from the shore.
Measured porosity ranges from 0.31 to 0.48, averaging
0.43 (Figure 3(c)). The porosity does show some inuence of mud by following the same spatial distribution, as
high porosity values were observed in zones of high mud
content (Figure 3(b) and 3(c)). However, the spatial distribution of the hydraulic conductivity is qualitatively inverse
to the mud distribution, suggesting that mud percentage has
a signicant impact on the measured hydraulic conductivity of the sediments in the study area. Sediments showed

Journal of Applied Water Engineering and Research

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hydraulic conductivities ranging from 5.6 to 17.51 m/day,

averaging 11.3 m/d (Figure 3(d)).

4. Discussion
4.1. General site feasibility
The feasibility of a seabed gallery intake system depends on
ve factors: (1) the type of the natural bottom sediments,
(2) the sedimentation rate of ne sediments, (3) the tidal
range, (4) underlying site geology, and (5) the impact on
the marine ecosystems.
Sediments in the study area are mainly sandy with low
mud concentrations, indicating general low deposition rates
for very ne particles. Sediments with high mud concentrations (up to 8%) were found in approximately 40% of
the surveyed area, however, the average hydraulic conductivity in the patch is close to 9 m/day. The sampling was
performed during the summer season, when the tide levels
drop to a maximum of 0.5 m below average level and constitutes the lowest tide of the year (Bird 2010). Daily tidal
range is about 2030 cm (Alharbi et al. 2012). Therefore, the
shallowest part of study area is always covered by seawater.
No hard rock was observed underlying the sediments. The
unconsolidated nature of the sediment will necessitate the
use of sheet-piling to stabilize the excavated areas during
construction.
The study area does not contain sea grass beds that could
interfere with the performance of the intake system caused
by leaves matting on the bottom and the associated accumulation of muddy sediments. The ecosystem surrounding
the area may be impacted by the chlorine used in the plant
operation (Alharbi et al. 2012), and the corals within the
surveyed area where totally bleached. Marine benthic fauna
consisting of mollusks and polycheate worms likely live in
the sediments. Construction of the gallery at this location
would allow the benthic communities to re-establish within
the upper layer of the lter.

4.2. Gallery cell lter design

The seabed gallery design developed for Shaqaiq follows
the typical conguration of an SSF commonly used in conventional freshwater water treatment facilities in the past.
Due to the low inltration rates at which SSF operates
(1.24.8 m/day), extensive areas are required to obtain a
sucient raw water supply using the typical design criteria
to meet large-scale demands. In order to reduce the footprint and at the same time meet the water demands for the
Shuqaiq-II facility or another desalination plant in the vicinity, the proposed seabed gallery intake would operate at an
inltration rate of 10 m/d which is higher than the typical
SSF.
Higher inltration rates and increased loading rates
could eventually clog the upper sediment layer of the system
and require periodic scraping or tilling. However, gallery

systems in the marine environment are less prone to clogging than a traditional SSF in a water treatment plant
because of water movement in the nearshore marine environment tends to keep sediments in a suspended state and
allows them to drift away. A pilot-scale study of a seabed
gallery intake at the City of Long Beach, California has been
operated at an inltration rate of 9 m/day for a period lasting longer than 6 months without any evidence of clogging
(Long Beach Water Department 2010). The seabed gallery
at Fukuoka, Japan has being operating for the last 8 years
without any clogging (Sesler & Missimer 2012; Shimokawa
2012). This has been attributed to the stirring eect of the
wave activity, ocean currents, and bioturbation caused by
sediment-ingesting, benthic marine organisms that degrade
the organic compounds and excrete fecal pellets that have
no detrimental eect on the hydraulic conductivity of the
sediments (Sesler & Missimer 2012).
Empty bed contact time is a critical factor in the design
and performance of slow sand or biolters to help remove
various naturally occurring organic compounds (Huck &
Sozanski 2008). The system at Fukuoka successfully operates with a contact time of 7 h; consequently, the proposed
system for Shuqaiq-II is designed to operate at the same
rate. Based on the selected inltration rate of 10 m/day, to
achieve 7 h of contact time, a 3 m thick upper sand layer
would be used. This thick upper layer would also protect the lter from sediment mixing caused by burrowing
infauna (e.g. polycheates). The gallery cell design includes
ve layers of sand and gravel with a total thickness of 5 m
(Figure 4). In order to prevent sediment inltration from
the upper layers into the bottom layers and intake screens,
the lter media layers were designed to grade downward
from ne to coarse grained according to the SSF design
guidelines presented by Barrett et al. (1991).
The lter would contain a gravel layer at the bottom with
a mean diameter of 10 mm and a hydraulic conductivity of
100 m/day. This is the basal water collection layer. It is
important for the collection screens located in this layer to
extract the feedwater at a nearly constant rate over the full
lter area to maintain the design inltration at a uniform
rate. The collection screens are designed within this layer
at a distance of 25 cm from the base of the lter, facilitating
the pumping and drainage of the lter.
4.3. Design of ow control in the under-drain system
To produce a uniform rate of withdrawal within the production layer, it is necessary for the ow rates through the screen
slots to be approximately the same. Flow along perforations
is described by Equation (1), where Cd is the discharge coefcient (ranging from 0.5 to 0.7), A is the area of the slot, g
the gravity constant, and h is the head dierential between
the outside and the inside of the pipe (equivalent to suction
head) (Barrett et al. 1991).

q(slot) = Cd A 2gh.
(1)

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D. Mantilla and T.M. Missimer

Figure 4. Schematic representation of the seabed gallery system design showing detail of the cell gallery sand layering and layer grain
diameter represented by d10 .

To guarantee uniform ow through the screen slots, it is

necessary to maintain constant suction heads along the ow
paths of the piping system. As water ows within the piping system, friction occurs along the pipe walls causing
energy loss. Therefore, minimizing the friction along the
drainage system is imperative to maintain uniform suction
heads across the entire system.
The DarceyWiesbach equation (2) was used to describe
the head loss along a pipe based on friction loss. Head loss
in the pipe is dependent on the friction coecient f , which
is a function of the wall smoothness of the pipe material
and the change in the Reynolds number (Re). Calculation
of the friction coecient varies between laminar and turbulent ow and the relationship between f and Re becomes
nonlinear when Re > 2200 (White 2011).
h1 = f

Q2
L

.
d 2g A2

(2)

The ColebrookWhite equation (3) is used to calculate f

in turbulent ow. However, this is not an explicit equation.
Therefore, to calculate a value for f , a numerical method
must be used. The NewtonRaphson method was used to
calculate f for turbulent ow because only three iterations are necessary to reach convergence. The method for
calculation is described by Saldarriaga (2007).


Ks
2.51
1
= 2 log10
+  .
f
3.7d
Re f

(3)

Since the purpose of the under-drain system is to collect

water from the base of the gallery, Q varies along the extension of the system. Re is a function of Q, which causes the
friction coecient to vary along the length of the pipeline
(collection header and laterals). Therefore, to calculate f ,
the dierent pipes within the system must be analyzed in

Journal of Applied Water Engineering and Research

sections. The approach consists of calculating friction coefcients at the beginning and end of each section and then
using the average to be representative of that pipe segment.
This approach allows division of the overall pipeline into
parts that have laminar and turbulent ow. Consequently, to
divide the piping system into segments with common characteristics, it is necessary to rst calculate the points where
there is a transition from laminar to turbulent ow using
Equation (4) (White 2011).

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Re =

QL
.
Av

(4)

In the lateral collector pipes, where water inow occurs

along the entire length of the pipe, segments were dened
every 5 m after the laminarturbulent transition point. In the
header pipes, the segments were dened to be the distance
between lateral pipe intersections. Besides the inuence of
the ow rate (Q) on the Reynolds number and friction coefcient (f ), the ow rates also inuence the values for hL .
Since the pipe is draining water from the gallery (actually
being pumped), the ow rate (Q) is increasing inside the
pipe from the distal end to the header pipe connection, following the relationship described in Equation (5) in which
Qf and Q0 are the ow rates at the end and beginning of
the pipe, q is the ow gained per unit pipe length (assumed
to be constant), and xis the total length of the segment. By
applying the DarcyWeisbach equation to an innitesimally
small length of the pipe, the inuence of the ow into the
pipe can be calculated (Equation 7).
Qf = Q0 + qx,

(5)

dhf
fx
Q2
8fx Q2
=
+ 2+ 2
.
dx
2g
dA
g d5

(6)

By replacing Q in Equation (6) with Qf from Equation (5)

and integrating x between 0 and L, the resultant expression was used to calculate the hL in each pipe segment
(Equation 7).


hf =

8
q2 L
2
2
2
Q
.
L

Q
qL
+
i
i
2 gd 5
3

(7)

Head loss in junctions accounts for most of the energy losses

in pipeline systems. Two types of junctions were used in the
design of the drainage system; (1) T-junctions and (2) crossjunctions. Graphical representations are shown in Figure 5.
The corresponding head loss coecients were calculated as
described by Hager (2010), using the equations for combining ow. For T-junctions the loss coecient was computed
separately for each branch using Equations (8) and (9),
where m = Az /Au , n = A0 /Au , and q = Qz /Qu . The energy
loss was calculated separately for each lateral using the

Figure 5. Under-drain system design detail showing: (a) depicts

an angular intersection and (b) a cross-junction.

Figure 6. Diagram showing the points of calculated head loss

within the under-drain collection system.

velocity at the exit point of each lateral (Equation 10).

fBranch 0 = 1 2m1 q2 cos z 2n1 (1 q)2 cos 0

2
+ n1 (1 q) ,
(8)
fBranch z = 1 2m1 q2 cos z 2n1 (1 q)2 cos 0
+ (m1 q)2 ,
hf = f

(9)

V
.
2g

(10)

Cross-junction loss coecients were calculated using Equations (11) and (12) as two separate T-junctions as shown in
Figure 5(b). In this case, the central channel was divided
into two pipes of equal diameter, and the head loss calculated independently. The total head loss for the central
channel was then dened as the sum of the head loss of the
two sub-channels (Equation 10).


fBranch subchanel 0 = q 2 (1 + 2m1 cos z )q ,
fBranch z = 1 + 4q + (m

(11)

cos z 2)q2 .
(12)

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10

Figure 7. Diagram showing the: (a) nal gallery system conguration and (b) under-drain system detail. Lateral pipes are drawn in
dashed lines. Dierences in the dash patterns represent dierences in slot densities. (c) Spatial distribution of the seabed galleries in the
surveyed area and respective hydraulic conductivity prole.

4.3.1. Point head loss calculations and ow uniformity

To calculate the ow across the screen slots within each
section of the drainage system, it is necessary to rst calculate the head loss at each point of the system. The total
head loss is dened as the sum of all the head losses that a

water plug may experience while moving from the selected

point until reaching the pump end of the drainage system.
Figure 6 shows a hypothetical drainage system, which was
used as an example for calculating the head losses at two
selected points. The total head loss at point 1 is equal to the

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Journal of Applied Water Engineering and Research

hL due to the ow through the slot, the hL due to friction in
the second section of the lateral and the friction in the rst
and second section of the header pipe, the hL experienced
by the lateral incoming ow when reaching the T-junction,
and the hL experienced by the line ow through the crossjunction. For point 2, the total head loss is equal to the hL
due to the ow through the perforation, the hL due to friction in the rst and second section of the lateral, and the
friction in the second section of the header pipe, and the hL
experienced by the lateral incoming ow when reaching the
cross-junction.
The ratio between the ow at the slot located in point 2
(p2) and the slot located at point 1 (p1) was used to determine the ow uniformity in the system. Values closer to
1 represent homogenous systems. The calculation of the
p1/p2 ratios of several under-drain congurations showed
that the major factor inuencing ow imbalance is the
number of cross-junctions in the system, followed by the
diameter of the pipes.

4.4.

Site optimization to achieve maximum operational

eciency
Shuqaiq-II IWPP operates with an open intake that feeds
the plant with 100,000 m3 /h of raw seawater. About 75% of
the raw water is directed to cooling systems for the power
plant, while the remaining 25% is directed to the SWRO
facility, where 16 trains of hollow ber membranes are
used to produce 212,000 m3 /day of fresh water, based on
a 40% recovery rate. The amount of surface area required
for the development of the gallery intake is the major factor
that aects construction cost. Therefore, in order to reduce
the footprint, the proposed intake system was designed to
meet the feed water requirements for the full SWRO facility (530,000 m3 /day) due to its high sensitivity to the water
quality (poor at the site). The feedwater for the cooling
system would still be supplied by the existing open-ocean
intake, as the current raw water quality does not have any
major impact on the performance of the power plant. The
use of dierent intakes for the power/thermal desalination
and SWRO facilities is becoming common in the Middle
East-North Africa region due to the higher feedwater quality
requirements for the SWRO process.
Based on the selected inltration rate of 10 m/day,
the minimum area for the intake is 53,000 m2 . In accordance with the under-drain design analysis, narrow cells
that require fewer cross-junctions are more ecient at providing a higher degree of uniformity of inltration rates.
Therefore, the area required for the present system would
be divided into 16 gallery cells (one for each RO train) with
an individual area of 3312 m2 , plus an extra cell gallery to
provide emergency capacity (Figure 7). This redundancy
also allows all 17 cells to be operated simultaneously at a
lower inltration rate during periods of poor water quality,
such as increased turbidity after storm discharges of any

11

of the wadis in the vicinity of the plant or a harmful algal

bloom.
To reduce the oshore construction cost, each gallery
would extend along the coast for 100 m and be constructed
about 35 m oshore. The proposed under-drain system
presents a p1/p2 ratio of 4.7. Varying the slot densities
across the laterals could help to compensate for these ow
dierences. Even with higher residual suction heads in the
rst few laterals of the system, lower slot densities would
equalize the amount of water owing into the pipe, helping
to compensate for the dierences in ow caused by changes
in the residual suction heads along the system (Figure 7(b)).

5. Conclusions
The hydrogeologic characteristics of the oshore study area
and the preliminary engineering design of the gallery system conrm the technical feasibility for development of a
seabed gallery intake system to supply feedwater to SWRO
facilities in the Shuqaiq region. The surveyed area is fully
covered by water year-round, and the hydraulic conductivity of the sediments allows a high inltration rate resulting
in a smaller overall footprint. Natural movement of sand
across the bottom would not signicantly aect the operation of the gallery cells as designed based on the measured
values of the natural sand hydraulic conductivity and the
design grain size of the uppermost layer in the gallery.
However, the rather ne nature of the native sand could
aect the lter if layers greater than 0.3 m in thickness were
deposited over it. This would require some maintenance
or a greater suction pressure would be required. Since the
uppermost layer of sand is similar to the natural sand and
is 3 m thick, bioturbation in the gallery cells which would
not carry native sand deeper into the coarser sand layers of
the cells.
The proposed under-drain system design using fewer
intersections tends to create a relatively uniform head drop
in the overlying lter which produces a more uniform inltration rate at the surface of the lter. This design would
tend to lessen the occurrence of patches of lter area that
have anomalously high inltration rates that could lead to
partial lter clogging.
The proposed seabed gallery intake system would
improve the feed water quality considerably, thereby,
diminishing the fouling of the RO membranes, and subsequently reducing the operational cost of the facility. Additionally, it would allow continuous operation of the plant
even after rainstorms that produce wadi discharge events or
in the event of a harmful algal bloom. It would also diminish any potential environmental impacts associated with
impingement and entrainment of marine organisms. Additional environment impact reductions would be achieved
by lesser chemical and energy use of the SWRO facility
because the gallery intake would allow a reduction in the
use of the current pre-treatment system.

12

D. Mantilla and T.M. Missimer

Acknowledgements
Field assistance was coordinated by Samir Al-Mashharawi.
Access to the facility was facilitated by Dr Nabil Nada and on-site
support was provided by the plant manager Mr Vajay Kumar.

funding
Funding for this research was provided by the Water Desalination
and Reuse Center and from faculty discretionary funding by the
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.

Notes on contributors

Downloaded by [Bibliotheek TU Delft] at 00:04 17 February 2016

David Mantilla completed his MS in environmental engineering at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
(KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. This research was conducted
for his MS thesis work. He is currently working on his Ph.D. at
KAUST in environmental science and engineering.
Thomas Missimer is a visiting professor at KAUST. He is a hydrogeologist and the author of 8 books and over 350 publications in
journals, conference proceedings, and book chapters. He was the
MS thesis advisor for David Mantilla.

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