JEDDAH – A planned desalination plant in Al-Jubail aims to cut energy costs when it becomes operational by the end of 2014. Construction began in 2012 on the mega-plant, which will use reverse osmosis (RO) to desalinate water for potable and industrial uses. Californian company Energy Recovery Inc. (ERI) will provide its pressure exchanger technology to Spanish firm ACCIONA Agua for the 100,000 m3/day seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant. Power & Water Utility Company awarded ACCIONA Agua a contract to design, construct, and bring into service a desalination plant called SWRO-4 by end of next year. ERI's PX Pressure Exchanger devices work in SWRO by recovering energy from the membrane reject stream and feeding it back into the process. The company claimed that over 116 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) will be saved at the Al Jubail plant using the devices. CEO Tom Rooney said payback on the PX devices could be as little as three months, based on the global average electricity cost of $0.10 per kWh. The Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) said earlier it is planning to build a 600,000 m3/day desalination facility. The new facility will be designed to meet the needs of northern Jeddah, Makkah and Taif. The SWCC director-general reportedly said that the production of the existing Rabigh desalination plant will be raised to 20,000 m3/day to supply Khulais and Rabigh governorates. Construction of the plant is expected to start at the beginning of 2014 and will be finished in 2018. SWCC runs more than 30 desalination plants on the Red Sea and the Gulf. At the end of 2012 contracts were signed for the third phase of the Yanbu-Madinah desalination project. A continuous increase in the popularity and use of desalination processes is expected in the upcoming years as global desalination capacity grows from 68.3 million m3/day at the beginning of 2011 to almost 130 million m3/day by the end of 2016, reports said. Though the long-term development of desalination use is positive, the recent rate of growth is negative. The global financial crisis in the real estate, increased energy prices, and the completion of major desalination programs in Algeria, Spain, and Australia among other factors decreased the new capacity rate for 2010and 2011. However, capacity increased from 2012. — SG
