Talk:Qattara Depression Project

Frash water lakes.

There have been statements for at least forty years, the most recent 2012, that there are vast deposits of fresh water in aquifers underneath the Sahara Desert. If the Quattara Depression is flooded wouldn't this contaminate the fresh water deposits below the Depression?AT Kunene (talk) 15:24, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it would. Manormadman (talk) 15:26, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No it would not. The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer system has a high hydraulic head (the water in it is under pressure). Even if the Depression were to be flooded to -60m or lower as all plans proposed so far state, the saline sea water would not penetrate the aquifer. ScienceDawns (talk) 19:08, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Porous Concrete-->Freshwater Lake?

Why not porous plugs that filter the salt? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.18.99.76 (talk) 14:10, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

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Freshwater section removed

This section reads like someone had an idea and inserted it into the article. No external links for a freshwater lake were in the section, which is the main reason why I removed it.

There are also scientific problems with the idea. The Qattara Depression contains vast amounts of salt because it is an Endorheic basin. Diverting some of the Nile would be the same as adding fresh water to a glass with a tablespoon of salt already in it. The salt remains in the basin because the water does not exit to the ocean.

--One Salient Oversight (talk) 12:28, 5 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If digging tunnels or canals is too expensive, why not pump the water, using electricity from the generators?

Someone please revise the article to address the following:

The reason that having the water flow by an all-downhill path is too expensive is presumably the cost of digging or blasting through something in the way that is higher than sea level. But why not have the water go over it? I assume it's too high for siphoning. But why not pump the water? Since the depression is below sea level, the height to which it would need to be pumped (the maximum elevation it reaches minus sea level) would be less than the height that it can descend (the maximum elevation it reaches minus the elevation of the depression). So if the pumps and generators are sufficiently efficient, the energy needed to power the pumps m*g*(maximum height - sea height) / pump efficiency should be less than the energy generated m*g*(maximum height - depression elevation) * generator efficiency.

Obviously, the flow would need to be in pipes rather than open channels, and this would considerably increase the cost of materials for construction, but compared to some of the ideas seriously discussed (such as using nuclear bombs), it seems, if not practical, at least plausible enough to explain why it's not viable.

47.139.43.97 (talk) 01:11, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Using generators to pump the water would be more expensive than just digging a canal. You could get land speculators to dig the canal for free, if you gave them the right to lease property on the coast of the new cove (You can't really call it a lake, since it's to be salt water), though you can generate hydroelectric power from the inflow of seawater, since it will evaporate almost as fast as it flows in, if not slightly faster, depending on the fluid capacity of the canal. Ideally, you would balance the water flow and evaporation rate to maintain a constant current for electricity generation.

The resulting cove would probably wind up being primarily a tourist resort destination, bringing a lot of money into Egypt. The water would, inevitably, become more and more salty, and the cove would start to fill in, though you could set up evaporation ponds along the shore to winnow the salt out (Easier than mining, since they could be completely solar powered, with automated valves that fill them up when the brine is pumped out by soloar powered pumps for salt extraction, while the evaporated water could be collected for drinking water for the local area. 73.162.91.238 (talk) 19:08, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This page is the same as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Sea. It should be merged? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.129.99.106 (talk) 16:11, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]