State of the Art and Future Applications of Desalination Technologies in the Middle East

Traditionally desalination has been associated to the Middle East and North Africa economies. However the availability and security of water supplies is today a growing concern and policy priority, both in the traditionally supply-constrained market of the Middle East and, increasingly, in other regions of the world. Water shortage is not only a phenomenon limited to the Middle East, and several large scale desalination projects have been awarded in other areas of the world.

Desalination volumes have nearly doubled since 2000 and it is expected to triple by 2020. Desalinated water supply has grown from 9.8 billion m³/year in 2000 to 18.1 billion m³/year in 2008, reflecting an 8% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). As water stress increases and desalination use expands outside of early-adopting areas like the Middle East, it is forecast that desalinated water volumes will reach 54 billion m³/year in 2020.

Desalination is now used in more than 120 countries around the world. Several large scale projects demonstrated during the last 30 years that it is now technically and economically feasible to generate large volumes of water of suitable purity through the process of desalination of seawater, brackish water, and water reuse. In the past the cost for seawater desalination was below US$ 0.50/m³ in many projects, however due to material cost increase the cost of desalination has subsequently increased to US$ 1–1.5/m³. The present chapter aims at illustrating various state of the art desalination technologies adopted for main industrial projects as well as new emerging technologies aiming at a more sustainable generation of water.

The present chapter also makes a comparison among different technologies based on energy consumption and association with power generation.