A new era for desalination in the Middle East

The United Nation’s 2015 World Water Development Report shows that 75% of the population of the Arabian Peninsula lives below the water scarcity level of 1,000 cubic meters per year, and that the region needs more water to ensure sustainable development. Desalination can be considered as an alternative water source, the report points out, but the desalination technology currently used in the region must reduce its dependence on oil. ACCIONA Agua is contributing fundamentally to this process by replacing the old thermal desal processes, Multi-Stage Flash (MSF) distillation and Multiple- Effect Distillation (MED), with reverse osmosis technology.

Building work on the Ras Abu Fontas 3 desal plant in Qatar began in mid-November. ACCIONA Agua is participating in the design and construction of the plant’s reverse osmosis desalination unit, selected by the consortium building the plant, formed by Mitsubishi Corporation and TTCL Public Company Limited. The plant, with a capacity of 164,000 m3/ day constitutes a milestone in the desalination field, since this is the first time reverse osmosis technology will be used to produce drinking water on a large scale in Qatar. And it will not be the only plant. ACCIONA is working on a second “desal” with this technology in Qatar: Facility-D QEZ3.

Reverse osmosis uses less energy and needs less investment per cubic meter of desalinated water compared to thermal desalination.

“Some of the Gulf countries are already building nuclear plants,” said Jesús Sancho, ACCIONA’s Middle East director. “This will favor reverse osmosis technology even more, because reverse osmosis only needs electricity to desalinate, whereas thermal desalination needs electricity and a fuel.” ACCIONA Agua’s experience with reverse osmosis is an excellent business visiting card in this respect. In addition to the two Qatar contracts, the company will soon start operating the Al Jubail desal in Saudi Arabia (100,000 m3/day) and Fujairah in the UAE (137,000 m3/day), being built by ACCIONA Infrastructure. (Video)

Last year, ACCIONA also won management of operation and maintenance for the Sohar desalination plant in Oman, which has a daily capacity of 20,000  m3. ACCIONA Agua presently has a pipeline full of desalination projects in the Middle East. Together, these would generate over 700,000 cubic meters of water per day. These contracts make ACCIONA a leading player in the region.

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Learn more about Water desalination process by reverse osmosis