Macro-engineering Design for an Artificial Lake in Southeastern Jordan

Abstract

Water situation in Jordan has become very critical. A feasible solution is to desalinate water drawn from Gulf of Aqaba (GoA). Another problem that Jordan faces is the very short coastline. These two problems can be solved by developing an artificial lake in south Jordan. The water from the lake can be desalinated while the lake itself provides a badly needed coastline. This work presents a macro-engineering design for the proposed lake; The proposed project is named "Red Sea-Jafer Basin Conduit (RSJBC)"; it involves a pipeline connecting GoA at the Red Sea with Jafer Basin (JB) in the south-eastern desert, where the topography of the region is exploited to develop an artificial Lake. Using multiple pumping stations, seawater will be pumped from GoA to JB though a 220 km long pipeline. After constructing the project, it will take three years to fill-up the Lake. Once it is filled, the pumping rate is reduced from 51 to 30 m3/s. However, based on fresh water needs, a volume of up to 21 m3/s can be desalinated. The suggested pipeline route has a curved path (CP) to avoid the mountains if it were to go straight path (SP). A comparison is conducted between CP and SP, where it was found that CP offers the lowest development cost for RSJBC, given fabric pipe is used. More specifically, a pipe diameter of 6 m enables total development cost of 2.74 B$, with corresponding annual operating cost of 306 M$.