Marafiq, the power and water utility supplying Jubail and Yanbu’, has awarded France’s Veolia Water a contract to build and operate the largest ultra-filtration and reverse osmosis desalination plant in Saudi Arabia. The plant will have capacity to desalinate 178,000 cmd of water, which will be supplied to the giant Sadara petrochemical complex being built by Saudi Aramco and Dow Chemical in Jubail Industrial City II (MEES, 21 June).
Announcing the award on 2 July, Veolia said the water supplied will be used in the Sadara facility’s two cooling towers and as boiler feed water. Initial treatment will involve air flotation to capture particles suspended in the seawater, followed by ultra-filtration. Then the water will be desalinated by reverse osmosis membranes before being remineralized. The plant is due onstream in June 2015, ready for the start-up of the first Sadara units in the second half of 2015. (CONTINUED - 565 WORDS)
