Multan is a region in Pakistan with arid environment and a nearby desert. With warm climate, no rainfall and other factors we get so many dust storms, especially in summer. Roads are always full of dust particles and cleaning homes on daily basis to remove dust is a big issue. At the end it all gets accumulated in sewers and sedimentation there cause loss of capacity. Since we humans, intelligent species, have the ability to turn our problems into opportunities and resources, can we somehow use this dust for something positive and benefit from it? Like if Phosphorus can be extracted from wastewater, can we not get something out of that dust?
The problem is the arisen and wind spread dust.
Using the dust won't solve the issue, it would be a new energy and resource consumptive process. Since the dust is not used deliberately for anything right now, we can assume that you have better materials (e.g., sand, soil with structure) for different purposes instead, so using the dust is probably wasteful from economic and environmental perspective.
Back to the original problem, you need to avoid arising and spreading of the dust.
Asphalt roads, proper agricultural management, protective forests and plants can decrease the problem on a sustainable way economically.
Plant trees.
Hello Irfan,
Since you want to directly use the dust storms in a useful application, your country may use that site for training of military special forces. Such harsh environment may be a perfect training site.
I think the issue is not using the dust but to prevent its arising by proper land management, mulching, etc as the dust particles are hazard to human health.
I suggested so because the habitabilty of the mentioned locational characteristics is very low!
The best rain for land is the one comes during dust as the dust generally contains seeds, pollen and organic materials (up to 9% of the total weight) more information in AlDousari, et al. 2012
Atached
Article Dust fallout characteristics within global dust storm major ...
- Badges
- Science topic