Desalination of water in Saudi Arabia by reverse osmosis, performance study

This study deals with performance of major reverse osmosis plants in Saudi Arabia in terms of their actual productions, maintenance problems, water recoveries, quality of products and their costs. It shows that the operating experiences with these plants have been from marginal to excellent. Most of the problems encountered were related to any, or combination, of the following causes: harsh conditions in which these plants had to operate, inadequate pretreatment of water, lack of trained operators, lack of preventive maintenance, as well as the designs that did not take into consideration the above factors.