Software aids Mongolia’s bid to ensure reliable water supply
Clean water is a rare commodity in many countries of the world, and governments often face problems ensuring its reliable supply. In Mongolia, an interdisciplinary research team is demonstrating how this vital resource can be efficiently managed and used. Specially developed software helps to detect weak points in the supply system.
Mongolia is a country of contrasts – in sum- mer, it becomes boiling hot, and in winter freez- ing cold; the north is damp, while the south is bone dry. One-million of its three-million citizens live tightly packed together in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, while the rest of the huge country is largely populated by nomads and their cattle.
Providing a clean supply of drinking water across the entire country is a difficult challenge. For starters, it is necessary to lay freezeproof water pipes over an area of 1.5-million square kilometres. The people in the countryside, therefore, use water from rivers or from wells they dig themselves. But these traditional ways of obtaining water are reaching the limits of their capacity. In recent decades, periods of rain during the summer months, which replenish the reserves of groundwater, have become infrequent. They have been replaced by heavy storms unleashing torrents of rain that runs off rapidly without soaking into the ground. At the same time, demand for water has risen with the rapid growth in the country’s population.
“Providing a supply of drinking water is becoming more and more difficult. To create a reliable supply in the long term, you have to take many different factors into account and find out how they influence each other,” explains Dr Buren Scharaw, of the Fraunhofer Application Centre for System Technology, in Ilmenau.
Born in Mongolia, he has been working for many years on a project known as Integrated Water Resources Management for Central Asia: Model Region Mongolia, known also as MOMO. Project partners include the universities of Heidelberg and Kassel, Bauhaus University Weimar, the Helmholz Centre for Environmental Research, the Leibniz Insitutute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries and various private-sector enterprises.
The model region under study by the research scientists is the catchment area for the Kharaa river and Darkhan, a city of 100 000 inhabi- tants.
Since the start of the project in 2006, Scharaw has travelled back to his homeland several times. He has examined the quality of the water from public and private wells, along with the distribution network, measured the energy consumption of pumps, and investigated the effectiveness of the sewerage system. All the data he has collected has been fed into the computer models developed at Franhofer Application Centre for System Technology.
“Our HydroDyn water management solution makes it possible for the first time to visualise the quality and the quantity of water resources and to model their future development,” Scharaw explains. However, there is plenty of scope for improvement: the water pumps consume lots of energy, the water pipes are in need of repair and nearly half the drinking water is lost on its way to the consumer through leaks. Many yurts have their own wells, but the water is often contaminated with bacteria from latrines.
“Having collected data and produced models, we are now preparing proposals that make sense in economical and ecological terms,” says Scharaw.
His team has developed a software program which can determine how the water supply can be sustainably secured using less energy. A measuring system for locating leaks has also been developed. Small sensors detect any drop in pressure in the pipes, making it possible for leaks to be localised with relatively high precision. Once a leak has been found, that section of the pipe can be repaired. To reduce contamination of the water supply and to increase the efficiency of the sewerage system, the scientists are now building a test sewage plant which contains microorganisms in high concentration.
“We expect this test facility to also deliver good results during the cold season, when the microorganisms are less active. The findings can then be transferred to a future full-scale plant.” In three years, when the project has been completed, the experts intend to present the administration in Darkhan with a catalogue of measures which will show how the water supply and sewerage system can be efficiently and cost-effectively secured.
Edited by: Martin Zhuwakinyu
Mongolia is a country of contrasts – in sum- mer, it becomes boiling hot, and in winter freez- ing cold; the north is damp, while the south is bone dry. One-million of its three-million citizens live tightly packed together in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, while the rest of the huge country is largely populated by nomads and their cattle.
Providing a clean supply of drinking water across the entire country is a difficult challenge. For starters, it is necessary to lay freezeproof water pipes over an area of 1.5-million square kilometres. The people in the countryside, therefore, use water from rivers or from wells they dig themselves. But these traditional ways of obtaining water are reaching the limits of their capacity. In recent decades, periods of rain during the summer months, which replenish the reserves of groundwater, have become infrequent. They have been replaced by heavy storms unleashing torrents of rain that runs off rapidly without soaking into the ground. At the same time, demand for water has risen with the rapid growth in the country’s population.
“Providing a supply of drinking water is becoming more and more difficult. To create a reliable supply in the long term, you have to take many different factors into account and find out how they influence each other,” explains Dr Buren Scharaw, of the Fraunhofer Application Centre for System Technology, in Ilmenau.
Born in Mongolia, he has been working for many years on a project known as Integrated Water Resources Management for Central Asia: Model Region Mongolia, known also as MOMO. Project partners include the universities of Heidelberg and Kassel, Bauhaus University Weimar, the Helmholz Centre for Environmental Research, the Leibniz Insitutute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries and various private-sector enterprises.
The model region under study by the research scientists is the catchment area for the Kharaa river and Darkhan, a city of 100 000 inhabi- tants.
Since the start of the project in 2006, Scharaw has travelled back to his homeland several times. He has examined the quality of the water from public and private wells, along with the distribution network, measured the energy consumption of pumps, and investigated the effectiveness of the sewerage system. All the data he has collected has been fed into the computer models developed at Franhofer Application Centre for System Technology.
“Our HydroDyn water management solution makes it possible for the first time to visualise the quality and the quantity of water resources and to model their future development,” Scharaw explains. However, there is plenty of scope for improvement: the water pumps consume lots of energy, the water pipes are in need of repair and nearly half the drinking water is lost on its way to the consumer through leaks. Many yurts have their own wells, but the water is often contaminated with bacteria from latrines.
“Having collected data and produced models, we are now preparing proposals that make sense in economical and ecological terms,” says Scharaw.
His team has developed a software program which can determine how the water supply can be sustainably secured using less energy. A measuring system for locating leaks has also been developed. Small sensors detect any drop in pressure in the pipes, making it possible for leaks to be localised with relatively high precision. Once a leak has been found, that section of the pipe can be repaired. To reduce contamination of the water supply and to increase the efficiency of the sewerage system, the scientists are now building a test sewage plant which contains microorganisms in high concentration.
“We expect this test facility to also deliver good results during the cold season, when the microorganisms are less active. The findings can then be transferred to a future full-scale plant.” In three years, when the project has been completed, the experts intend to present the administration in Darkhan with a catalogue of measures which will show how the water supply and sewerage system can be efficiently and cost-effectively secured.
Edited by: Martin Zhuwakinyu
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