Performance study of RO systems in Saudi Arabia

Desalination of water is one of the most important engineering tasks facing Saudi Arabia today. Lacking unlimited supplies of potable Water, the Kingdom must depend upon the desalination process of brackish well water or sea water to satisfy the ever increasing demands. These demands are expected to reach the 430 MGD figure in 1980 and 700 MGD in 1985. until quite recently, the reverse osmosis played a rather modest role in the country's desalination program and was almost exclusively limited to brackish water applications and plants not exceeding a capacity of 1 MGD. Within the last year, significant changes took place in favor of these processes. The estimated total output of RO units to be commissioned this year will be about 70 MGD. This figure includes the 3.2 MGD plant for desalting the sea water in Jeddah and the 55 MGD plant in Riyahd from brackish well water. This paper deals primarily with the performance of RO systems, their cost of operation/maintenance and the factors affecting the cost. These factors may be divided into three groups as related to feed water, system design and system operation. The quality of feed water and good pretreatment plays an extremely important role in performance of a RO system. This study pays special attention to these parameters in expectation that more cost effectiveness will evolve in the future either through a better understanding of the processes or an improved process design match to materials employed.