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Saudi water and power company ACWA Power announced on Wednesday that it has entered into a strategic partnership with [Andorra-based] research and development company Water Global Access (WGA) to further develop WGA's disruptive, green water desalination technology
The agreement was signed at the sidelines of the Saudi Water Forum in Riyadh.
ACWA Power said in a press statement that integration of WGA's Hydraulic Injection Desalination (HID) into future projects would enable the company to deliver exceptional value since HID does away with the chemical treatment stage and requires substantially less energy compared to existing desalination technologies.
"The HID energy consumption is substantially lower than that required by existing desalinisation technologies and its thermodynamic principles have been proven in a prototype unit," the statement noted.
Thomas Altmann, EVP Innovation & New Technology of ACWA Power, said: "Seawater desalination is an energy-intensive process, and ACWA Power has already pioneered a paradigm shift in the industry and significantly reduced the energy consumption to unprecedented low levels. This partnership with WGA will fast-track the next step-change in energy efficiency to pave the way towards the deployment of greener technologies through innovation."
According to the press statement, since HID doesn't need the chemical treatment of water, the brine released is entirely green. Additionally, computational fluid dynamics modelling has confirmed that WGA's technology allows for the desalination of 40,000-ppm seawater with a Specific Energy Consumption (SEC) of less than 1.9 kWh/m3, which is nearly a third lower than existing Sea Water Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) projects.
ACWA Power currently operates 16 water desalination plants, out of which 50 percent are located in Saudi Arabia, including Rabigh 3 Independent Water Project (IWP), Saudi Arabia's largest IWP and the world's largest SWRO desalination plant.
(Writing by SA Kader; Editing by Anoop Menon)
