Qattara Depression project

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Map of the Qattara Depression with the waterways.
All planned routes for tunnels and / or canals from the Mediterranean Sea to the Qattara Depression

The Qattara Depression project is a concept for a major civil engineering or hydraulic engineering project in Egypt that competes with the Aswan Dam . The Qattara Depression is to be expanded so that it can be flooded. The depression lies below sea level and is currently a large desert. By connecting the region and the Mediterranean Sea through tunnels and / or canals, salt water could get there. Due to the desert climate, the water would evaporate there quickly. If the inflow and evaporation of water can be balanced, there would be a continuous flow there. This can be used to generate hydro energy. It can create a hypersaline lake or salt pan as the water evaporates, leaving the salt behind.

The plans envisage the construction of a long tunnel or canal approximately 55 km in length. Another plan envisages a pipeline 320 km in length that will feed fresh water from the Nile at Rosetta . For comparison, the Suez Canal is 193 km long. If you compensate for the evaporation by flowing water, the level of the lake can be kept constant. Planned heights are 70, 60, 50 and 20 meters below sea level.

Plans to generate electrical energy there go back to 1912 and the Berlin geography professor Albrecht Penck . In 1957 the CIA presented the US President Dwight Eisenhower with the plan that peace could be achieved by flooding the Qattara Depression in the Middle East . According to the CIA, there were four advantages:

  • It would be "spectacular and peaceful."
  • It would "change the climate significantly in the years to come."
  • It would "provide jobs during the construction period and living space for the Arabs from Palestine after completion ."
  • It would steer the view of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser "to other matters" because "he needs a way to get off the hook of the Soviet Union ."

Era ball

The subject was introduced in 1927 by Dr. John Ball discussed in more detail. He also made the first preliminary calculations regarding fill rate, power generation and salinity.

“Non-Egyptians do not seem to have known about the existence of Qattara until the First World War. The merit of the 'discovery' goes to Dr. John Ball (1872–1941), English director of the Survey of Egypt , who led the surveying of the depression in 1927 and who was the first to propose using it to generate electricity from hydropower. "

Bassler era

From 1964, Professor Friedrich Bassler headed the international Board of Advisers , which was responsible for planning and financing the project. From 1975 he also advised the Egyptian government on this matter. He was commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology to prepare an initial feasibility study. Bassler was the driving force behind the project for almost a decade. In the mid-1970s, a team of eight mainly German scientists and technicians worked on the plan to build the first hydro-solar power plant. The first Bassler study from 1973 led the Egyptian government to commission a study itself. So it decided in 1975 that Bassler and a group of companies called the Qattara joint venture should conduct a feasibility study.

The concept of the project was: Salt water from the Mediterranean should be channeled through a tunnel or channel into the Qattara Depression, which lies below sea level. The water would be fed through penstocks to generate electricity. In the depression, the water would evaporate quickly due to the hot and dry weather. This could lead to more water in the sink and thus continuously generate electricity. A 60 m deep canal would connect the Mediterranean with the depression. This would not only transport water, but also serve as a shipping route to Lake Qattara with a port and fishing grounds in the valley. The water in the depression would have a height of 60 m below sea level and it would take ten years to fill it up to this height. After that, the incoming water would compensate for the evaporating water, so that the height of the lake no longer changes. In the first phase of the project, the Qattara power plant could generate 1.67  GW . In the second phase there would be an additional 1.2 GW. A pumped storage plant would increase the maximum capacity by 4 GW, so that a total of around 6.8 GW could be generated.

The main problem of the project was the water supply in the valley. According to calculations, building a canal or tunnel would be too expensive. Bassler decided to use nuclear explosions to excavate the canal. This would require exactly 213 boreholes with explosions of 1.5 megatons each. That corresponds to an explosive force of 100 Hiroshima atomic bombs each . In addition, at least 25,000 people would have to be relocated. There were further problems with the tectonically unstable Red Sea Rift , which is only 450 km away from the planned explosions, and with a possible salinisation of the groundwater, which is important for the Bahariyya and Siwa oases .

Coastal erosion was another threat because ocean currents could change. In addition, many unexploded mines from World War II would need to be removed. Because of these problems, the Egyptian government rejected this plan and those involved gave up on the project.

Renewed interest

Today's scientists are still researching the feasibility of such a project to address economic, population and environmental difficulties in the region, but the project was never implemented.

See also

literature

  • Mohamed Eizel-Din, MB Khalil: Egypt's Qattara Depression Potential Hydropower . In: Markus Aufleger, M. Mett (Ed.): Handshake across the Jordan . Water and Understanding . Innsbruck 2011, ISBN 978-3-902719-94-2 , pp. 89-96 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Magdi Ragheb: Pumped storage Qattara Depression solar-hydroelectric power generation. August 21, 2014, accessed December 31, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Mohamed Mahmoud: The River Nile - Qattara Depression Pipeline (Al Afuk Al Garby Channel). The Mediterranean Journal of Measurement and Control, 2009, accessed December 31, 2015 .
  3. ↑ From Rosetta to Qattara. Great Circle Mapper, accessed December 31, 2015 .
  4. ^ Canal Characteristics. Suez Canal Authority, 2008, accessed December 31, 2015 .
  5. ^ Masahiro Murakami: Managing Water for Peace in the Middle East . Alternative strategies . Tokyo 1995, ISBN 92-808-0858-3 , pp. 64-66 ( online ).
  6. ↑ MI: Gale. 2009. Farmington Hills, CIA Suggestions, Document Number CK3100127026 . Reproduced in "Declassified Documents Reference System"
  7. ^ John Ball: Problems of the Libyan Desert . In: The Geographical Journal . tape 70 , no. 1-5 . Wiley, 1927, ISSN  0016-7398 .
  8. ^ Grove Koger: The Great Sahara Sea: An Idea Whose Time Has Come . In: Mercator's World . Volume 4, No. 2 . Aster, 1999, ISSN  1086-6728 , pp. 23 .
  9. ^ History of the institute and the research institute for hydraulic engineering. (No longer available online.) Technische Universität Darmstadt, archived from the original on December 28, 2015 ; accessed on December 31, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wasserbau.tu-darmstadt.de
  10. ↑ Viorel Badescu: Macro-engineering Seawater In Unique Environments . Arid Lowlands and Water Bodies Rehabilitation . Springer, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-642-14778-4 .
  11. ↑ Maher Kelada: Global Hyper Saline Power Generation Qattara Depression Potentials. MIK Technology, 2010, accessed December 31, 2015 .

Coordinates: 29 ° 30 '  N , 27 ° 30'  E