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The World's Largest
Desalination Plants
Does size matter?
Meet six of the world's largest desalination plants
Meet six of the world's largest desalination plants
By Aquatech
The recently awarded Rabigh 3 desalination
project in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to ACWA Power was branded as one of the
world’s largest desalination plants.
To put it into perspective, with a capacity
of 600,000 m3/day, that’s 600 million litres of water that will eventually be
produced per day.
There is no doubting at that size, the Saudi
mega-size project will be one of the largest out there and the second largest
awarded RO desalination plant.
Yet most desalination professionals will know
it’s not the largest and it raises the question of well, with over 20,000
desalination plants contracted around the world, which are the largest?
We set out to put together this top six list.
The largest desalination plants in the world
1. Ras Al Khair,
Saudi Arabia: 1,036,000 m3/day
Commonly regarded as the desalination
heavyweight of the world, the massive Ras Al-Khair is a hybrid project that
uses both thermal multistage flash (MSF) and reverse osmosis (RO) technologies.
Located 75km north-west of Jubail and serving
Riyadh, the site also has a substantial power generation component, with a
capacity of 2,400MW.
The main contractor for plant construction
was Doosan and its consortium partner Saudi Archirodon, with Poyry acting as
the consultant for the project.
Ras Al-Khair started operations in 2014 but
in 2017 was put up for sale by the Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC)
to kickstart privatisation plans and the sale of its assets.
2. Taweelah, UAE – 909,200 m3/day
Despite the project being in its infancy,
when complete Taweelah will catapult the UAE into the top three list.
To date, seven consortia are bidding on the
mega project, including: ACWA Power; Suez International Power SA Dubai Branch
(Engie), with Marubeni Corp; Sumitomo Corp, with Veolia Middle East; Valoriza
Agua, with Utico FZC and IDB Infrastructure Fund II; Cobra Instalaciones y
Servicios, with Orascom Construction; Acciona Agua, with Pal Group; and Suez
International, with Sojitz Corporation and NV Besix SA.
ACWA Power with EPC consortium comprising
Sepco3 and Abengoa has so far placed the lowest bid using the higher
electricity tariff at AED8.26 ($2.25) at $0.49 per cubic metre.
More than 40 companies were reported to have
initially shown interest in the Taweelah tender.
Once complete, the Taweela power and water
complete is expected to raise the emirate’s proportion of desalinated produced
water by RO from 13 percent today to 30 percent by 2022.
3. Shuaiba 3, Saudi Arabia – 880,000
m3/day
A second in the list for Saudi Arabia, the
Shuaiba 3 development is located 90 kilometres south of the historic city of
Jeddah.
A consortium involving Siemens of Germany for
the power plant and Doosan for the thermal desalination plant were selected by
ACWA Power to provide project engineering, procurement and construction of the
plant.
One expansion to the plant has been completed
and one expansion is in the final construction stage with a total additional
400,000 m3/day of RO capacity added, according to ACWA Power.
When complete in the first half of 2019,
Shuaiba will eventually overtake Ras Al Khair as the largest operating
desalination plant with total capacity of 1,282,000 m3/day.
The development is part of wider plans from
the Water and Electricity Company (WEC) to significantly increase desalination
capacity in the country.
4. Sorek, Israel – 624,000 m3/day
If Ras Al Khair is considered the heavyweight
hybrid of the world then Sorek should be considered the heavyweight membrane
plant of the world in operation with an enormous 624,000 m3/day capacity.
Located 15km south of Tel Aviv in Israel and
developed by IDE Technologies, the project was and continues to be unique in
the use of 16 inch seawater reverse osmosis membranes but in a vertical
formation.
A further development – Sorek 2 – has since
been announced with a capacity of 548,000 m3/day. A total of seven local and
international companies were recently shortlisted to develop the project.
Once complete, Sorek 2 will be the sixth
desalination plant to operate in Israel alongside Hadera, Ashkelon, the first
Sorek, Palmachim and Ashdod.
5. Rabigh 3 IWP,
Saudi Arabia – 600,000 m3/day
A third in the list for Saudi Arabia, the
Rabigh 3 development was recently awarded to ACWA Power.
Amongst 55 expressions of interest and five
bidders, ACWA Power submitted the lowest tariff at 0.53USD/m3 and was selected
alongside the Saudi Brothers Commercial Company (SBCC) in Rabigh, Saudi Arabia.
The Water & Electricity Company will act
as the off taker of the project with the desalinated water eventually supplying
Makkah al-Mukarramah and Jeddah.
The Rabigh 3 IWP is being procured under a
25-year build-own-operate (BOO) contract and will commence commercial operation
on the 31st of December 2021.
6. Fujairah 2,
United Arab Emirates – 591,000 m3/day
A second hybrid to join the list but this
time in the UAE, Fujairah 2 stacks up at 591,000 m3/day. This includes multiple
components: a 450,000 m3/day thermal plant, a 136,500 m3/day reverse osmosis
facility and a 2000 MW power plant.
The contract was awarded to a consortium made
up of Alstom for the power and Sidem (Veolia) for the water, under the name of
the Fujairah II Independent Water & Power Production project. Abu Dhabi
Water & Electricity (ADWEA) is the off-taker.
Sidem says the hybrid MED-RO solution helps
to match seasonal water and power demands. Furthermore, to protect the plant
from algae blooms which can be problematic in the area, a dissolved air
flotation (DAF) system is used as a pre-treatment.
More information on the Fujairah 2 project
can be found in the video below:
Can the big get bigger?
Answering the
question of whether desalination capacity will continue to be pushed in the
world’s largest plants, Leon Awerbuch, director of the International
Desalination Association (IDA), said: “I believe mega scale desalination
plants in the future will get bigger than Ras Al Khair. The Japanese Mega-Ton
projects are already under consideration and a 1,500,000 m3/day project in
Saudi Arabia is already in planning stage.”
He added: “In the
future there will be projects of this scale in Saudi Arabia, China, India and
even in Abu Dhabi there is competitive for the scale of 600,000 m3/day. All of
these developments will on an Independent Water Project (IWP) or Independent
Water and Power Project (IWPP) basis but will be required and guaranteed by
governments.”
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