Nymphea-Environnement, a French company, will introduce its innovative technology to harvest fresh water from the submarines springs in the sea at the World Future Energy Summit which opens in Abu Dhabi on Monday.

The company is owned by the Vinci Group, the largest European construction company, and benefits from their worldwide presence, well-established network, and financial capacities.

Nymphea has already worked for the Qatar Ministry of Environment and just set up a branch office in the UAE to unveil this new technology in the region.

Explaining the concept, Nymphea said it is based on the exploitation of natural resources which are currently unused in the GCC region.

In this system, No pumps, electricity or fuel are being used to obtain the fresh water, said a statement from the company.

The technology, pioneered by Pierre Becker, a French geologist, former commercial diver and offshore construction company owner, introduces an unexploited resource in water - the submarine springs of fresh water.

'Thousands of submarine springs of fresh water exist all over the world. Sometimes very deep, sometimes at just a few meters from the coast, the springs have been existing for thousands of years,' said the company.

Studies have conformed that the GCC has several possible sources of water which are currently unexploited. This precious water has been wasted for millions of years,' it added.

The company has, for example, discovered a spring in Syria that has a flow of 5 000 liters of water per second. This can satisfy the consumption demand for a city of one million people,' said Becker.

About 10 years ago, Becker realized that this phenomenon could be the answer of the growing problem of water scarcity in the world and set up NympheaEnvironnement to take up the challenge to provide people with this fresh water from the sea.

However, Becker wanted a company that deeply respected the environment. This desire to preserve the planet led the company to develop a water tapping technology that makes use of natural energy: gravity, buoyancy and water head.

'The installation is built to resist attack by the sea, particularly storms and swell. The stainless steel structure designed by NympheaEnvironnement to fit perfectly on the springs discovered is split in 2 units.'

The first one insures the water tightness around the spring and avoid any contamination by the sea water. The second unit is a pressure and overflow management system that hydromechanically regulates different parameters in real time.
 
The result is that the system only collects the natural volume of water given by the spring and enhances the quality of the water to its best.

In addition, the system collects only the volume of water that was previously lost in the ocean. Therefore the tapping units will never disturb the hydrogeological balances that have existed for thousands of years in some cases.

The main advantage of the water obtained by the Nymphea system is its low cost: 3 to 6 times cheaper than the desalinization plants, said Becker.

Therefore it is mainly intended for human consumption in areas affected by increasing drought. Depending on its quality, this water may also be used for agriculture or industry.

Several contracts have already been signed all around the world. In the Middle-East region, all the Gulf countries have a well-known hygrogeological potential in submarine springs.-TradeArabia News Service