The plant in Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia, on the Persian Gulf, was at that time one of the largest seawater desalination plants operating on the principle of reverse osmosis, with a throughput of 90,902 m³/h. It was built to supplement an existing thermal MSF plant. Preussag Wassertechnik GmbH commissioned us to evaluate the installed pre-treatment, treatment and post-treatment technology. The focus of our analysis was on risk identification and risk minimization with regard to fouling and scaling in the plant. For this purpose, models for determining the solubility for the relevant substance systems were considered and applied to the given seawater and plant data. In addition, the operating mode of the Energy Recovery Turbine was investigated with regard to the pressure loads on the pinholes.
Preussag Wassertechnik GmbH
