Performance study of water desalination methods in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is an arid desert country without rivers or sweet water lakes, however, it does have vast amount of groundwater and seawater. In order to make these waters suitable for human consumption and industrial use, most of their salts must be removed by some means. The desalination methods most frequently used in the Kingdom are: Multistage flash (MSF) evaporation, reverse osmosis (RO), and electrodialysis (ED). During the last decade, we have witnessed a spectacular growth of desalination plants. This growth is expected to continue in the next decade. The present production capacity of all desalting plants in Saudi Arabia is estimated to be 750,000 m³/day; this figure will be most likely tripled in the next five years. This paper is a report on a performance study of the most significant desalination plants in the Kingdom. The plants, which include MSF and seawater and brackish water RO plants, were selected either because of their size or their importance to the desalination technology. The plants are briefly described and their performances are discussed.