In a country where water is as precious as gold, providing uninterrupted supply of water takes center stage, especially amid the rapid expansion of Saudi Arabia's population and industrial development. Saudi Arabia's Saline Water Conversion Corp. (SWCC) produces 3.36 million cubic meters of desalinated water per day, a daily cost of SR8.6 million based on the SWCC's 2009 figures when the cost of producing one cubic meter of desalinated water was SR2.57. Transporting it added an extra SR1.12 per cubic meter. The Saudi Minister of Water and Electricity Abdullah Al-Hussayen has said earlier that water demand is rising by more than seven percent annually, and that more than SR500 billion ($133 billion) of investment in the water and power sector will be required over the next decade. Against this backdrop, the Dow Chemical Company, which has a 50-year history of innovation and market leadership in the water industry, has pledged to spearhead the building of a new world-class reverse osmosis membranes facility in the Kingdom that would deliver cutting-edge technologies for water desalination and water re-use for potable, non-potable and industrial water. A senior Dow executive told the Saudi Gazette that the company is committed to providing Saudi Arabia with sustainable quality water using the latest innovative solutions. The following are excerpts from an interview with Ilham Kadri, Commercial Director, Dow Water & Process Solutions (DW&PS), Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA): Based on your study about the Kingdom's sources of water, i.e, from scarce ground water and seawater, why do you recommend reverse osmosis as the best water treatment method, aside probably from pioneering that solution? Why not the other methods like distillation and filtration such as solid block activation carbon? How cost-efficient is RO? Can you quantify it, e.g. for every gallon of “waste” water treated using RO, how much of it is left as produced filtered water? When evaluating the treatment of water, regardless of the source, a number of treatment options need to be looked at in order to select and optimize the technology to be used. Typically, evaluations are based on factors such as product quality, energy consumption and capital expenditure, among others. Reverse Osmosis (RO) technology scores high in comparison with other desalination technologies, in particular thermal distillation processes such as Multi Stage Flash distillation when the true cost of energy is taken into account. In the last 10 years, with the desalination and water re-use boom in the world, RO membrane technology became the technology of choice due to the tremendous savings in capital expenditure and energy consumption. In parallel with the innovations in pre-treatment technologies and chemicals performance, the integrated system became much more cost-effective and far more sustainable in productivity and quality while maintaining a clean environment with the lowest possible emissions. Some experts say that compared to other methods, RO requires water pressure, is fairly slow and typically wastes more water than it treats. Are their observations true? RO does require pressure but this in fact is an advantage. RO simply produces fresh water from sea water or saline aquifer waters by applying pressure with no phase change required, which means that, thermodynamically, RO is a more efficient process than distillation processes that require the conversion of liquid water to steam or vapor then condensed back to desalted liquid water with all of the thermodynamic losses this entails. As for the speed of the process, RO is a continuous operation and the separation is instantaneous. Additionally, another key advantage due to the continuous operation is the footprint (or amount of land) required to produce a given volume of fresh water. RO is well known to require less land and therefore RO usually judged to be a more intensive process. The issue of wasting water varies depending on many variables such as water chemistry, water physical parameters, and others. In RO, we describe this as RO Recovery Rate, meaning the percent of freshwater that can be extracted from the feed/raw water. RO Recovery varies between 45 percent in seawater to 95 percent in municipal water. In thermal desalination processes, we see high recoveries (up to 50 or 60 percent), however, a massive amount of the fresh water produced will be re-used to cool the system which reduces the net recovery to 10-15 percent. On the other hand, the reject that is sent back to the sea is far higher in temperature in thermal desalination compared to RO, which leads to extra costs and energy to cool the reject water. This is becoming more of a challenge to overcome globally. In the Middle East region, we can see the Arabian Gulf water temperature reaching the level of 40 degrees Celsius. Such temperatures offer a favorable environment for the growth of micro-organisms, bacteria, algae, etc. Is the produced filtered water through RO already potable? If yes, how pure and safe is it compared with the filtered water using the other methods? Due to the wide range of models of RO membranes available, RO technology meets the most stringent water quality standards currently imposed, whether they are international standards such as the World Health Organization (WHO) or the national quality standards as are often used in Saudi Arabia. However, post-treatment is always required to tune the final quality in terms of pH, salts adjustment and balance like Calcium and Magnesium. Compared to RO, thermal desalination depends on evaporation or steaming so a more extensive post-treatment will be required to achieve the required potable standards. In Saudi Arabia, the product of the thermal process is usually blended with RO product water to balance the salt levels to meet the potable water characteristics. As an example, the Jubail MSF Water feeding Riyadh City is blended with water from Al Wasia plant and Se'ed wells. Does RO function in the same way whether it be industrial and municipal water, industrial processes, pharmaceuticals, power, or residential water? This is one of the key advantages of RO. The process is so flexible which makes it applicable in the same manner in all of the above applications. What needs to be considered is selecting the best fit membrane to the source and quality of the water. A key parameter to consider when selecting the membrane model for municipal drinking water is where it is usually required to be tested and certified by regulatory bodies such as the NSF for products sold in Saudi Arabia. What are the advantages and benefits of applying the RO solution as compared with the other two mentioned above? The advantages include reduced costs, reduced energy consumption, lower environmental impact, less land required and an increased flexibility in operation. Also, Saudi Arabia remains reliant on the traditional more energy-intensive thermal technology versus the more advanced spiral wound RO technology. There is a real missed opportunity here because the energy that goes into the thermal process actually translates to lost resources availability and profits for future generations. What are the disadvantages of RO? How do you address these limitations? There are no obvious disadvantages since the RO membrane is part of an integrated process that starts at the intake, through the filtration pre-treatment and ending with the post-treatment and distribution. The challenge is how to best integrate the system to overcome new challenges in the water quality such as turbidity, red tides, temperature, and so on. In the past, it has been necessary to take some RO plants off stream during times of excessive turbidity, red tide events, large oil spills or temperature increase. The development of advanced pre-treatment processes such as Dissolved Air Flotation and the increasing use of Ultrafiltration upstream with innovation in chemicals technology of RO membranes and chemicals used managed to reduce the impacts of such events with minimizing future plant downtime events. For example, the added values of integrated Ultrafiltration - Reverse Osmosis (UF/RO) systems, such as reducing footprint and emissions, increasing net recovery with maintaining sustainable performance - created more tendency from key users to apply the technology for industrial water reuse and desalination applications. When will you start the construction of the manufacturing facility for DOW FILMTEC Reverse Osmosis (RO) elements in the Kingdom? What is the sharing arrangement with the Saudi government? What is its estimated cost? Its expected production capacity? Would it train and employ Saudis? What percentage would they be of the total workforce? What is the size of the workforce? We are very excited about our upcoming RO investment in Saudi Arabia, and we were pleased to see our customers and local partners sharing in our excitement at the recent Saudi Water & Power Forum. We have not yet announced the start date of the construction of the new manufacturing facility. What I can I can tell you is that engineering on this project has already begun, and we expect to be operational by 2015 latest. In terms of estimated capacity, Dow does not disclose those figures externally. But I can tell you that at this stage, we're looking at quite a large investment. And to give you an idea of the significance of this investment, this is not only the first Dow RO membrane manufacturing facility outside the United States, it's also the first ever such facility in the entire ME&A region. We have been actively engaged with key stakeholders in the Saudi government even before we announced our intention to invest in Saudi Arabia. Those dialogues about mutually-beneficial areas of collaboration remain ongoing. One of our points of discussion is in fact local job creation, which Dow is committed to through this investment. We'll be looking to have the right mix of Dow manufacturing, commercial and technical experts, as well as local talent, for the facility. This is also a first for Saudi Arabia in terms of having access to highly specialized manufacturing jobs because the facility will employ the latest manufacturing processes. We will train Saudis both inside and outside the Kingdom and we will encourage education and learning through promoting specific curriculums in schools, colleges and universities early enough in the process. We are proud and privileged to be a partner of Saudi Arabia as it invests in the growth and talent development of its people. In recent years, the government has made significant investments in enhancing knowledge and education, as is evident in institutions such as the Princess Noura University, Al Mandia Knowledge City and the King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST). In fact, Dow and KAUST have been partners for nearly three years now. Today, the Dow Middle East & Africa R&D Center at KAUST is conducting research on water treatment and processing, research that is critical to the needs of the Kingdom. We've also identified talented new Saudi employees who've joined Dow since we partnered with KAUST, both in the Kingdom and abroad. We firmly believe that Dow's success in Saudi Arabia is tied to the development of the young people of Saudi Arabia, and that's part of the reason that we decided to invest in KAUST. What about the opportunities/outlook for Dow in Saudi Arabia in the coming 2 years? Overall, Saudi Arabia offers tremendous benefits to investors, thanks in part to its stable economy, which has proven resilient throughout the global financial crisis. This has encouraged many investors to take a closer look at the Saudi market and to build a stronger presence locally. In terms of the specific business opportunities for Dow Water & Process Solutions, as I'm sure you know, Saudi Arabia is the largest desalination market in the world. If you factor in the population growth rate and the ambitious investments being made to develop infrastructure, you have a very attractive market for our solutions, be it for seawater desalination, industrial or municipal water reuse. We should also not forget the growing water reuse segment. What are the challenges facing Dow in this market? In our industry specifically, we believe that the first key challenge is the overall awareness about the technology and what it can do today for the Kingdom and for future Saudi generations. We want to continue to raise awareness about water scarcity and the type of modern technologies available to the water players to adopt cost-effective and low-energy RO and UF technologies. We believe that if the more abundant oil resources can be allocated for uses other than treating water, then it can only be beneficial for the Kingdom and future generations. We also believe that if we can reuse waste water, then it is no longer a waste. The second challenge we face is a technical one. The quality of raw water is becoming worse and availability is less. It is our core responsibility to rapidly develop our innovations and technologies to meet future demand today in terms of raising the Recovery Rate while ensuring sustainable quality and productivity. That's why we are coming closer to this market, to better understand the needs and the unmet needs, and we will provide the right solutions through a local R&D facility and a local manufacturing asset. __
