ABSTRACT

Using the Qattara Depression Project in Egypt to create

hydroelectric dam is an idea that has intrigued
dreamers and engineers alike for more than a century.
Unfortunately, it has remained only an idea because no
one has found a way to make it economically viable. In
this paper, the author outlines a way to do it profitably
while respecting the original dream.

A NEW LOOK Frank Nemecek

Revised on 23 March 2021

AT AN OLD
IDEA
Re-Examining the Qattara Depression Project
Intellectual Property Notice
A New Look at an Old Idea: Re-examining an Old Idea was originally written on May 9, 2020 and revised
on March 23, 2021. Copyright by Frank P. Nemecek.

The methods, processes, and technology described in this paper are Patent Pending with the U.S. Patent
& Trademark Office as of August 28, 2020 (Application 63/071,441). They are protected by both U.S. law
as well as the Patent Cooperation Treaty between the United States, Egypt, and 34 other nations.

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Contents
Intellectual Property Notice .......................................................................................................................... 1
Background on the Qattara Depression ....................................................................................................... 3
Overview of this proposal ............................................................................................................................. 5
Revenue generated by the Qattara Project .................................................................................................. 7
Hydroelectricity......................................................................................................................................... 7
Drinking Water .......................................................................................................................................... 7
Agriculture ................................................................................................................................................ 8
Solar and Wind Generated Electricity ....................................................................................................... 8
Real Estate and Tourism ........................................................................................................................... 9
Desalination ................................................................................................................................................ 10
Conclusions ................................................................................................................................................. 12
Table of Figures ........................................................................................................................................... 13
References .................................................................................................................................................. 14
End Notes .................................................................................................................................................... 15

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Figure 1 - Qattara Depression from the Air (Photo by Marc Ryckaert)

Background on the Qattara Depression

The Qattara Depression refers to a large segment of land in Egypt that drops to 133 meters below sea
level. The depression itself reaches a maximum depth of 147 meters from its outer rim to its lowest point.
It is large enough to hold 1,213 cubic kilometers of water (Flooding the Qattara Depression).

The Qattara Depression Project is a macro-engineering project that involves diverting water from the
Mediterranean Sea into the Qattara Depression via a canal or tunnel. The idea to do such a thing was first
introduced to the world in 1874 by François Élie Roudaire. Jules Verne subsequently incorporated this
idea in his novel Invasion of the Sea from 1905. It was thought that an inland sea in a desert climate would
have a positive impact on the overall climate.

A hydroelectric power plant has long been envisioned as a source of revenue for this project. Dr. John Ball,
a geologist who surveyed the Egyptian deserts for the British government, first proposed this idea in 1927.

One of the unique benefits of this project is that, unlike almost every other hydroelectric power plant, it
would not require either filling for its reservoir nor a high-cost dam to contain said reservoir (M. Salem).
This is because the Mediterranean Sea acts as its reservoir and the Mediterranean Sea is already filled and
contained.

Previous version of this project, however, proved to not be economically viable because, once the
depression is filled with water, the amount of water that could continue to flow in would be limited by
the amount that evaporates every day. While the amount of water that would evaporate in a dessert

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climate is considerable, it has never been enough justify the expense of digging a tunnel 56 kilometers in
length.

In 1955, the Central Intelligence Agency proposed using the Qattara Project as something that they
believed would stimulate peace in the Middle East. The costs of the project, however, proved prohibitive
and the idea was dropped again.

At least eleven different teams of engineers have examined the Qattara Depression Project over the past
centuryi. In each case, they were not able to overcome limits to the amount of electricity the project would
be able to generate once the depression is filled.

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the Qattara Depression Project not only as a business
idea but to offset the impact of rising ocean levels due to climate change. The original limits, though, have
continued to make it cost-prohibitive.

This proposal outlines methods and techniques to increase dramatically the amount of water than can
flow into the Qattara Depression after it is otherwise full. By doing this, its hydroelectric generating
capacity will not drop in the way that it does under all other proposals in the past century.

This proposal also adds new sources of revenue to the Qattara Depression project beyond electricity
production. In this way, the project will become more profitable once the depression is filled with water
rather than less so as it is in previous proposals.

From an environmental perspective, this proposal also increases the amount of sea level rise that would
be managed through this process. It also introduces additional techniques that will capture greenhouse
gases, further mitigating the impact on global temperatures.

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Overview of this proposal
Previous iterations of the Qattara Depression Project faced a hurdle. Once the depression is filled with
water, the amount of additional water that can be let in is limited by the amount of water that would
evaporate. This limitation, which has prevented this project from moving forward for a century, is
removed under this new process.

Two fundamental things are changed in order to do this.

1. The hydroelectric dam will be accompanied by a desalination plant to convert the incoming sea
water into fresh water. This would create a new product to be sold, namely fresh drinking water
in the dessert.
2. Crops will be planted in the Old Delta region of the Sahara Dessert, which adjacent to the Qattara
Depression and immediately south of it. Once the depression is temporarily filled with water,
some of that water will be diverted to irrigate those crops.

The impact of revenue here is important. Any amount of water that is sold to residential, commercial, or
industrial customers would also mean revenue from the sale but also an increase in the amount of water
that can flow through the hydroelectric dam. The crops themselves, could also be used as a revenue
source for the project.

The fact that the water has been desalinated upstream also means that the resulting Qattara Sea will not
become a brine pit as water evaporates leaving salt behind. This in turn opens commercial fishing in the
new Qattara Sea as an additional revenue source towards the project’s economic viability.

The project is illustrated in full on the next page.

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Figure 2 - Graph of Qattara Depression Project

1. Sea water flows from the Mediterranean Sea into a tunnel.

2. Sea water flows to a hydroelectric power plant where it generates electricity.
3. Sea water flows from the hydroelectric power plant to a desalination plant where the salt is
separated from it. Some of the now fresh water is diverted to be sold to residential, commercial,
and industrial customers. The rest of it continues into the tunnel.
4. Fresh water flows into the Qattara Depression, filling it and creating an inland freshwater sea.
5. Once the depression is full, water will then flow from inland sea into an irrigation network in the
Old Delta region where it will supply water for crops.
6. Solar array and/or wind farm.

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Revenue generated by the Qattara Project
Unlike previous iterations of the Qattara Project, this version does not rely exclusively on hydroelectricity
to produce revenue. While the production of electricity is still a major component of this business process,
the project gains three additional sources of revenue.

First, some of the desalinated water can be sold to residential, commercial, or industrial customers. This
would require the installation of pipes to connect the project with its water customers. However, it is
likely that would still be profitable since there is no other significant source of fresh water in the
immediate vicinity.

Second, crops would be planted in adjacent fields that are irrigated by the canal. These crops – be they
food, cotton, or other – can be sold at market prices. The amount of revenue generated by this portion of
the project will depend on the type of crops selected.

As the Qattara Depression fills with water and becomes the Qattara Sea, it can be stocked with fish. This
would later support a fishing industry in the area.

Finally, once each of the Qattara Sea is established, there would likely be a substantial market for seaside
real estate. This would include both residential properties as well as resorts and other commercial
properties.

Hydroelectricity
Estimates for how long it will take for the Qattara Depression to fill range from 10 – 20 yearsii. While it is
filling, this project can generate as much as 56.8 gigawatts of hydroelectricity annually. (M. Salem)

Once it filled, however, there are three components that determine the amount of power generated:

1. The amount of water that evaporates.

2. The amount of desalinated water that is sold as drinking water.
3. The amount of desalinated water that is used to irrigate crops in the Qattara Depression.

This plan concludes that, due to the increased demand for water generated by the second and third points,
the Qattara Depression project will continue generating at full capacity even after the depression itself is
otherwise filled with water from the Mediterranean Sea.

Drinking Water
One can conclude intuitively that there will be a substantial demand for drinking water in the Sahara
Dessert, one of the largest desserts on the planet and home to 2.5 million people (Encyclopedia
Britannica). The challenge, however, there is not sufficient data to conclude with any degree of certainty
as to exactly how many people or companies will buy water nor how much they will buy or at what price.

Fortunately, the success of this proposal does not rely on a specific number to be known in advance. The
economic viability of this proposal comes primarily from hydroelectricity production with wind or solar
electricity production as a secondary source. In that light, while the amount of money that would come
from the sale of drinking water will likely be significant, it is essentially bonus money rather than a part of
the critical core of this proposal.

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Agriculture
While others have suggested food crops in the Old Delta region, this proposal envisions planting cotton in
the area as its primary crop. This is because cotton is the most water intensive crop that grows in the
region. The more water a given crop uses, the more water can flow from the Mediterranean Sea through
the tunnel into the Qattara Sea.

The more water can flow into the project area, the more two key objectives are realized:

 More electricity can be generated by the hydroelectric plant; and

 More sea level rise due to global warming can be mitigated.

A single cotton plant uses 18 inches of water to achieve maximum yield. Thus, an acre of cotton crops will
therefore use 18 acre-inches of water or 65,340 cubic feet of water per acre per growing season (Bednarz,
Hook and Yager).

The Old Delta region is 13,785,258.4 acres. Therefore, it will use 900.7 billion cubic feet of desalinated
water per growing season. Since cotton takes 150 – 180 days to grow (National Cotton Council), there
would amount to 5 – 6 billion cubic feet of desalinated water used every day throughout the growing
season if the entire area were used for growing cotton. This, along with the water that evaporates, is more
than enough water to keep the hydroelectric power plant in operation full-time even after the Qattara
Depression is filled.

Because this is more than enough, one will need to use less than a full area for cotton. The remainder of
the Old Delta can be used to plant olive trees or any number of other crops that will not require as much
water.

There are also two other points that are worthy of discussion at this point.

First, as the region continues to warm due to climate change, the cotton crops will need more water. One
study demonstrated that these crops would need approximately 11 – 18% more water by the year 2040
(Ouda, Ewis and Badawi).

Second, the more water that is sold for drinking water, the less this project will depend on agriculture to
achieve sufficient water flow to keep the hydroelectric power plant operating at full capacity. The
challenge, as mentioned in the previous section, is that it is impossible to know at this point exactly how
much water will used for drinking water.

Luckily, it is not necessary for either of these data points to be solidified at this point for this proposal to
be economically viable. One simply needs to know that is possible for enough water flow to be maintained
for the hydroelectric power plant to continue at full capacity once the depression is otherwise full.

Since it will take at least 10 years for the Qattara Depression to fill, the best course of action is to wait
until it is within a year or two of being filled before making any decisions. One can then decide how should
be used for cotton and how much for other crops in order to achieve the ideal water flow.

Solar and Wind Generated Electricity

Numerous engineering studies have suggested adding a solar and/or wind generated electricity to the
Qattara Depression Project in order to make it more profitable. This includes Patricia Weisenee and Magdi
Ragheb from the Role of Engineering Towards a Better Environment conference in 2012, Asad Salem and

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Emad Hudaib from their 2014 article in Advances in Environmental Technology and Biotechnology as well
as others. While solar electricity was not a part of the patent that is attached to this project, there is no
reason why one should not include it and achieve even greater profitability.

Real Estate and Tourism

As the Qattara Depression transitions to the Qattara Sea and electricity and drinking water before more
plentiful in the area, the area around what is now the depression will become more and more valuable.
This will include residential housing as well as commercial properties, such as hotels, resorts, and so on.

As with the business prospects associated with drinking water, it is not possible to know at this point
exactly how much revenue would be generated associated with it. Therefore, like drinking water, this is a
revenue stream that would not be a key part of establishing the economic viability for this project.
Regardless of how much or how little is generated, it should be construed as bonus revenue like the water
aspect.

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Desalination
The process of removing salt from seawater has proven to be challenging and expensive in the past, which
has been detrimental to the economic viability of similar projects. However, there are three developments
in recent years that dramatically reduce those costs. These include a development from the University of
Texas at Austin and Penn State as well as a pair of contests by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Figure 3- Desalination membranes remove salt and other chemicals from water. (Photo by Tyler Henderson/Penn State)

In January of 2021, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Penn State developed a new
membrane for reverse osmosis. This new technology is 30 – 40% more efficient than previous
technologies. As such, it could be able to desalinate more water at a lower cost than the membranes that
have been used for years. (Culp, Khara and Brickey)

The U.S. Department of Energy also launched two American-Made Challenges that are related to making
desalination more inexpensive and doing with alternative energy. Those two research and development
initiatives are the Waves to Water Prize and the Solar Desalination Prize.

The Waves to Water Prize is a five-stage competition designed to encourage development of wave energy
from the world’s oceans and use it to power desalination efforts. It was launched in June of 2019. It
attracted seven design proposals that are currently in their fourth stage of development and evaluation.
The Department expects to announce to complete this program in August of 2021.

The Solar Desalination Prize was launched on April 28, 2020. This is a four-stage competition to accelerate
the development of low-cost desalination systems that utilize solar-thermal power to transform seawater
into clean drinking water.

19 quarterfinalists, out of 162 applicants, were announced in this competition on October 19, 2020. Each
of these 19 designs shows considerable promise. The U.S. Department of Energy is continuing to evaluate
all the designs and expects to announce a winner of this competition in the Spring of 2022.

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Between the Texas/Penn State membrane and the designs from the two competitions run by the U.S.
Department of Energy, there are a total of 27 design options to consider. Each of these 27 options bring
with them a strong potential to reduce the costs of desalination by 30% or more.

While I do not have a specific option to embrace currently, I hasten to point out that it is likely going to
take at least three years to dig the 56-kilometer-long tunnel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Qattara
Depression with a five-year construction timeline being quite plausible. This means that even if all legal
and regulatory hurdles to construction were cleared and the project was fully financed today, it would be
another three to five years before water could begin flowing.

This delay, I believe, provides a unique opportunity evaluate each of the 27 options more closely while
construction on the tunnel moves forward. After another year or two evaluation, the best option for
desalination could be plugged into the overall design in time for water to begin flowing once the tunnel is
completed.

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Figure 4- Sahara Desert (Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann)

Conclusions
The opportunities available in the Qattara Depression has fascinated engineers, scientists, and writers for
more than a century. Those possibilities, however, have been unrealized because no one has been able
to make those opportunities continue to be economically viable once the depression is filled with sea
water.

By desalinating the sea water and using it to irrigate crops in the Old Delta region, immediately south of
the Qattara Depression, however, one changes those metrics. A hydroelectric dam can remain at full
capacity. New sources of revenue - such as the crops, the desalinated water itself, and additional
electricity from solar and wind generated sources - add to this potential, making a profitable venture in
the Qattara Depression even more profitable.

All of this leads to the conclusion that, after more than 100 years of dreaming about the Qattara
Depression and its potential, it is finally time to move forward with it. The facts that climate change is
causing sea levels to rise and that at least some of those rising sea levels can be mitigated with this project
only add urgency to this project moving forward expeditiously.

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Table of Figures
Figure 1 - Qattara Depression from the Air (Photo by Marc Ryckaert) ........................................................ 3
Figure 2 - Graph of Qattara Depression Project ........................................................................................... 6
Figure 3- Desalination membranes remove salt and other chemicals from water. (Photo by Tyler
Henderson/Penn State) .............................................................................................................................. 10
Figure 4- Sahara Desert (Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann) ........................................................................ 12

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References
Ball, John. "Problems of the Libyan Desert." The Geographical Journal (1927): 21 - 38.

—. "The Qattara Depression of the Libyan Desert and the Possibility of its Utilization for Power." The
Geographical Journal (1933): 239-317.

Bednarz, Craig: Ritchie, Glen, et al. Crop water use and irrigation scheduling. Camilla: University of
Georgia, 2003.

Central Intelligence Agency. CIA Suggestions, Document Number CK3100127026. Farmington Hills: Gale
Research, 1955.

Culp, Tyler E., et al. "Nanoscale control of internal inhomogeneity enhances water transport in
desalination membranes." Science (2021): Vol. 371, Issue 6524, pp. 72-75.

De Martino, Ing. Guissepe. "The Qattara Depression." Water Power (1973).

Encyclopedia Britannica. Sahara Desert Africa: People. 9 September 2020.

<https://www.britannica.com/place/Sahara-desert-Africa/People>.

"Flooding the Qattara Depression." 29 November 2010. The Basement Geographer.

<https://web.archive.org/web/20151123003918/http://basementgeographer.com/flooding-
the-qattara-depression/>.

Lee, Dominic S.F. United States of America: Patent WO 2009/123654 A1. 2009.

National Cotton Council. Field to Fabric. 7 September 2020.

<https://www.cotton.org/pubs/cottoncounts/fieldtofabric/crops.cfm#:~:text=Cotton%20is%20g
rown%20in%2017,planted%20crop%20in%20the%20country.>.

Ouda, Samiha, M.M. Ewis and M.I. Badawi. "Water requirements for clover and cotton under climate
change conditions." Journal of Soil Science and Agricultural Engineering (2015): 375-383.

Roudaire, Francois. "An Algerian Inland Sea." Nature 23 August 1877: 353-357.

Salem, Asad and Emad Hudaib. "Evaluation of Al Qattara Depression renewable energy potentials."
Advances in Environmental Technology and Biotechnology 2014.

Salem, Miriam. "Water and hydropower for sustainable development of Qattara Depression as a
national project." Energy Proceedia (2012): 994-1044.

U.S. Department of Energy. Solar Desalination Prize. 28 April 2020. Website. 22 March 2021.
<https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/american-made-challenges-solar-desalination-prize>.

—. Waves to Water Prize. 13 June 2019. Website. 23 March 2021.

<https://americanmadechallenges.org/wavestowater/>.

Verne, Jules. An Invasion of the Sea. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.

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Weisenee, Patricia and Magdi Ragheb. "Integrated wind and solar Qattara Depression Project with
pumped storage as part of Desertec." Role of Engineering Towards a Better Environment, 9th
International Conference. Alexandria, 2012.

End Notes
i
These other studies include John Boll’s study from 1933 as well as more recent engineering studies from the 1950s
to present.
ii
Estimates as to how long it would take for the Qattara Depression to fill range from 10 to 20 years. The earlier
patent claimed 10 years (Lee). Scholarly articles that have been published in peer-reviewed journals, however, have
calculated that it would take 20 years to fill (M. Salem).

This author believes that the true amount of time will be closer to the 20-year horizon projected by scholars. The
fact that at least some of the desalinated water from this project will be sold as drinking water rather than used to
fill the Qattara Depression further emphasizes the likelihood that the true amount of time in question will be closer
to 20 years than 10. However, in the interest of producing revenue estimates that investors could be confident in,
this paper will assume the worst-case scenario of it only taking 10 years.

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