Desalinating seawater

Worldwide, only 3% of drinking water is produced by desalination, even though almost 40% of the world's population lives within less than 70 kilometers of the coast.Seawater could become one of the main alternative sources in the decades ahead. In the next 10 years, desalination water production capacity should increase from 40 million cubic meters/day in 2006 to 96 million cubic meters/day in 2015 (ref GWI October 2006).

More than half of this growth is forecast to be membrane technology including large projects in the Arabian Gulf where reverse osmosis will be used alongside thermal desalination processes.

Veolia Water provides highly specific expertise to customers suffering from water shortages.

•Veolia Water is committed in the long term to helping their customers to develop original and appropriate solutions, suited to their particular technical, economic and social circumstances and constraints.

Creating desalination solutions:

Through its specialist subsidiaries and its experience in operating plants,Veolia Water can provide a complete range of services, from design to construction and operation.

• Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies (VWS) is a fully owned subsidiary of Veolia Water.

• VWS is a design and build company and a specialized provider of technological solutions in water and wastewater treatment.

• VWS has over 100 years of proven experience in desalination, dating back to the firstWestgarth thermal desalination units in 1890.

• Today, through Bekox, Entropie, Metito Arabia Industries,OTV, Sidem,Westgarth and other local entities,VWS combines proven expertise with unsurpassed innovation to offer technological excellence to their desalination customers.

•World leader in Multi-Effect Distillation through Sidem and Entropie's expertise, VWS has more than 80% of the worldwide installed MED capacity.

•In membrane desalination,VWS has first class RO references from modular installations delivered by their regional entities to large turnkey plants built by OTV or Westgarth with capacities of up to 350,000 cubic meters/day.With a unique offering of technologies developed to manage key issues such as pre-treatment, energy recovery or treatment of RO concentrates,VWS provides its desalination customers with a full range of expertise tailored to their specific requirements.