ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY SPAIN-JORDAN COLLABORATION AND KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER EXPERIENCE

The growing of cities and industry during the last centuries brings in parallel an increase in water consumption for different human needs like drinking, cleaning, washing and for the production of goods, increasing the production of wastes. In Europe, the implementation of the Council Directive 91/271/EEC of 21 May 1991 concerning urban wastewater treatment, arises new concepts in WWTPs management and operation from the adaptation of existing plants, lacking of robustness and flexibility, to the new requirements. In order to solve the main problems of wastewater management, researchers efforts have been focused, during last years, in objectives like i) to improve the water quality by minimizing the operational costs in order to achieve sustainable treatments and ii) to minimize the sludge production and increase its usability for energy recovering.

In most arid Middle Eastern countries, including Jordan, the scarcity of conventional fresh water supplies poses a serious threat to sustainable and balanced socio-economic growth and development. In planning for water uses, especially in such arid areas, one primary objective should be kept in mind: sustainable development. The scarcity of water in Jordan renders the management of this critical resource very complex and conflictual, from the political, technical, socio-economic and environmental perspectives. The usable water budget of the Country is relatively low when compared to the social, economic, and environmental needs of Jordan.

It is paramount that, where development is planned, it should proceed with the adoption of appropriate measures, using a combination of conservation, recycle and reuse technologies wherever possible. At present, all these problems are aggravated by lack of adequate environmental, management and technical education.

The collaborative action described in this work has been developed under the Agency for Collaboration and Development of Spain (AECID) it was based on a collaborative action with the objective of promoting the information exchange between the two partners involved in the project, the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) from Spain and the Al-Balqa' Applied University (BAU) from Jordan. This action expectations were the strengthening of the lines of research and scientific innovation of both partners. As a result a fruitful collaboration on the environmental field arised. During the collaborative action, several travels and training seminars took place in order to introduce the BAU group into the environmental assessment based on LCA methodology and to the application of LCA in the water sector. These field was identified for BAU an area of interest and with an actual lack of knowledge. Other important benefit of this action has been to share existing knowledge in control strategies into wastewater treatment plants of UAB. On the other hand, two additinal main strengths advantages to UAB have resulted, the introduction to thermal desalination process and the numerical investigation of thermal fluid flow problems in desalination technology.