Desalination plant in Marafiq

A contract was signed in June 2007, for the complete design and build of the desalination plant, which is included in an Independent Water and Power Production Project (IWPP), led by MARAFIQ, the Power and Water Utility Company for Jubail and Yanbu, Saudi Arabia. This forms part of a long term expansion plan for power and desalination capacities in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and involves the supply not only of desalinated water but also the production of 2750 MW of electricity. The overall IWPP Project was won by a Consortium of developers composed of Suez Energy International in partnership with ACWA Power and Gulf Investment Corporation, which placed an Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract to a consortium for the new Power and Desalination Plant. The members of this consortium are General Electric (USA), Hyundai Heavy Industries (Korea) and SIDEM (France). Within the construction framework of this new water and electricity production plant, Veolia WST-Sidem will supply the thermal desalination units by recuperating the heat from the power station, General Electric will assure the supply of the power station equipment, and Hyundai Heavy Industries will assure the construction of the seawater intake unit and work for reject into the sea.The plant will provide 800,000m3/day of desalinated water to Jubail Industrial City and the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia - a desert region facing massive industrialization plans and a growing population. The project will be completed by 2010.

The desalination plant will be based on SIDEM's unique Multiple Effect Distillation (MED) process, and will include 27 desalination units, each having a capacity of 29,630 m3/day, and a remineralization plant. The MED process is one of the leading technologies incorporated within the project. It recovers the exhaust heat from the power plant and uses it to evaporate sea water at low temperature. As its electrical consumption is low (only one third of that of competing processes), it is the ideal solution for addressing the normally large energy consumption required for desalinating seawater.