QATAR – ACCIONA has revealed it will finance an Artificial Intelligence (AI) project at the Umm Al Houl desalination plant in Qatar to lower the carbon footprint of the plant by 12,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. The plant, scheduled to become operational by April 2021, will use an AI platform called Maestro, to optimise operations and achieve energy savings. The Maestro AI platform processes operational data in real-time to allow predictive, autonomous and continuous optimisation at scale. (Construction Week)

NAMIBIA – The governments of Botswana and Namibia have recommitted to the Walvis Bay seawater desalination plant project in Namibia. The head of states of the two countries discussed the water supply project during a one-on-one meeting and expressed interest in the ambitious project. The project involves pumping water from the Atlantic Ocean and treating it through a large desalination plant built in the Western Namibian Port city of Walvis Bay. A pipeline would transport water from the plant to the Namibian capital Windhoek and Botswana’s capital Gaborone. The project’s financing is expected to be provided by both countries. (PUMPS AFRICA)

_{Pipelines carrying desalinated water.  Credit: Tasnim News Agency}

IRAN – The president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, recently inaugurated five projects to transfer desalinated water from the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman to inland arid provinces. The new pipelines supply desalinated water from the southern coasts to the desert areas and industrial plants in several provinces, including Hormozgan, Kerman, Yazd, Isfahan, South Khorasan, Khorasan Razavi, and Sistan and Balouchestan.  (Earasia Review)