For many years, inter 3 has been working on developing an integrated water resource management system with local experts in Iran and other countries in the Middle East in order to address the declining water supply and the resulting competition between agriculture, industry and public water supply. Yet the water shortage is still considerable and will increase in the future.

How can new technologies be used to access additional water resources?

Improving the low recovery rates of brackish water resources is one of the ways to increase water availability. But to achieve that, the existing technological systems must first be further developed. This challenge is being addressed by environmental process engineers from the University of Technology in Berlin and innovation researchers from inter 3, led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, in the newly launched HighRec project. The goal is to develop and test desalination technologies that use less energy and more renewable energy than previous techniques and to minimize the amount of brine concentrate left behind. Demonstration sites in Iran and in Qatar are intended to provide results in this regard.

inter 3 is responsible for analyzing brackish water resources and utilization potentials in both countries and for performing the comparative analysis of new technological solutions with already existing technologies. Furthermore, inter 3 will prepare the results didactically via e-learning courses in order to support the use of the new technology by local experts.