Today, one of the most pressing problems faced by the Middle East is the acute shortage of water. Experts predict that the current supply of water will further dwindle by half over the next four decades, which is why the region’s governments are aggressively spending over USD 130 billion on water and waste-water management annually.
Further, a recent report by risk consultants Maplecroft says that Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia make up four of the six Gulf states that are most vulnerable to a shortage in water supply, risking disruptions to operations and investments. DuPont, a company known for “putting science to work,” is committed to providing the Middle East with technology-based solutions that enhance the long term sustainability of today’s rising challenges. DuPont is addressing the region’s water issues by introducing innovative water and waste-water technologies while optimizing its own water usage. DuPont creates tailored, proven solutions that can help reduce particulate, SO2, NO2 or sulfur emissions or formulate cleaner fuels. DuPont is committed to provide innovative processes and products for environmental health and safety that also help keep customer operations running efficiently. DuPont Clean Water Technologies, one of the world’s largest commercial industrial wastewater treatment facility operators, offer a wide range of products to preserve the Middle East’s water resources. Its ISO14000 certified wastewater management solutions can be deployed for pre-treatment and treatment, organic recovery for high-water-content waste streams, and waste treatment for customers with as few as 30 gallons of treatable water. With DuPont innovative solutions in clean technologies, it can help meet Middle East environmental regulations while increasing profitability. Chlorine Dioxide (ClO2) solutions offered by DuPont are capable of killing bacteria, spores, viruses, fungi and algae within shorter contact time. CIO2 systems are also being evaluated by Dubai, Doha and Saudi Arabia, thus making the Gulf one of the key markets for DuPont ClO2 disinfection solutions. When compared to conventional chlorine disinfection methods ClO2 minimizes disinfection by-products (DBP’s) such as trihalomethanes (THM’s), haloacetic acids (HAA’s), and bromate which are bio persistent and chemicals with health risk. This results in achieving environmentally safe and satisfactory disinfection results with much less chemical. “The Middle East’s rapidly growing population and thriving industries are directly impacting the escalating water issue. Today around 45 million people in the region are without fresh water, hence there is an urgent need to step up water and waste-water management systems. Addressing these issues, DuPont plans to play an integral role to meet Middle East’s water management challenges through our science and innovation,” said Cengizhan Okur, Sales Leader Clean Water TMENA, DuPont Chemical & Fluoro. Biotechnology can also be employed to produce drought-tolerant crops that can spare a bigger fraction of the Middle East’s water while offering higher agricultural productivity. Pioneer Hi-Bred, a DuPont business, is a leader in drought-tolerant research since more than 50 years and is engaged in two major programs that can help Middle Eastern farmers boost yield in water stressed conditions: the Drought I program produces drought-tolerant maize hybrids developed with native traits through molecular-enhanced breeding to improve yield and return on investment in water-limited environments, while the Drought II program combines transgenic traits with native traits and conventional breeding approaches to protect maize yields during drought conditions across all environments. DuPont also uses ‘steam stripping,’ an economical and eco-friendly method of treating wastewater streams during petroleum and petrochemical cleanup operations. The approach strips targeted organic compounds out of the water so that only they are burned rather than the entire waste stream. Internal water conservation programs form an integral part of DuPont’s overall water management agenda. The company aims to reduce water consumption by at least 30 per cent over the next 10 years at its global sites located in areas such as the Middle East where renewable freshwater supply is limited or stressed. For its other sites, DuPont intends to retain existing consumption levels through the year 2015 through conservation, reuse and recycling initiatives that balance against production volume growths.
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