Saudi Arabia to build world’s largest desalination plant
New plant will supply water to north Jeddah, Makkah and Taif
The Saline Water Conversion Corporation in Saudi Arabia has announced its plan to establish the world’s largest desalination plant in Rabigh, northwest of Jeddah. It will have a capacity of 600,000m3 of water a day.
“Work on the project will start in the first quarter of 2014 and will be completed in 2018,” said Muhammad Al-Thubaity, director general of SWCC in the Western Region. He added that allocation for the multibillion riyal project has been made in this year’s budget.
The new plant will supply water to north Jeddah, Makkah and Taif. The capacity of the present desalination plant in Rabigh has been increased to 20,000m3 a day to supply drinking water to Khalees and Rabigh.
Al-Thubaity said the new plant will follow the reverse osmosis system. It will meet water requirements of cities and villages around Rabigh. He emphasised SWCC ‘s determination to supply adequate amount of water to all parts of the Kingdom.
SWCC currently produces around 20.7% of the total world production of desalinated water. They announced that they want to add four million cubic meters capacity to its desalination portfolio over the next 15 years. SWCC anticipates a gap of about 1.5mnm3 between water demand and supply from current facilities by 2025.
