Analysis of sustainable water supply options for Kuwait

This thesis considers several options for improving the sustainability of Kuwait's water supply system. The country currently relies heavily on desalination and brackish groundwater extraction. The options considered for increasing the flux of potable water into Kuwait include expanding the desalination capacity, importing water from other countries, expanding the uses of reclaimed wastewater, and rainfall harvesting. Options for water storage are also considered, including both aquifer and surface systems. Case studies are presented which demonstrate the potential for indirect potable use of Kuwait's highly purified wastewater, and the importance of a storage reservoir as part of such a system. In order to assess the feasibility of rainfall harvesting, a model was constructed to simulate the runoff processes in the Rawdhatain drainage basin in northern Kuwait. Due to the coarse resolution of the input data, reasonable results could not be obtained using the input parameters gathered from available data.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Murtaugh, Katharine A. (Katharine Ann)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Elfaith Eltahir.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34582

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34582