The ocean covers approximately 71% of the Earth's total surface area, yet only 0.26% of the total water volume on Earth is freshwater that humans can effectively utilise. This scarcity of freshwater is particularly prominent in water-stressed regions such as the Middle East and Africa, where the price of water can be as precious as gold. While seawater desalination technology has been around for several decades, it is only in the past 20 years that the next generation of desalination processes has significantly improved energy consumption and environmental impact, making seawater a viable water resource for human consumption.
Veolia is a global leader in seawater desalination, with over 40 years of operational and process expertise. We currently provide desalination services in 108 countries, with a daily processing capacity of 13 million cubic metres. Veolia offers comprehensive seawater desalination solutions and has a track record of successful projects, including distillation, membrane-based processes, and combinations of both technologies.
We can combine these two processes to create hybrid installations.
Distillation desalination: salts and water are separated as a result of a number of evaporation cycles. This is also known as thermal desalination
Membrane desalination: filtration is carried out by reverse osmosis, which involves forcing water at high pressure through a membrane that retains up to 95% of salt particles and 99% of impurities
BARREL Seawater Desalination Innovative Solution
In 2019, SIDEM, a subsidiary of Veolia Group, introduced an innovative solution for seawater desalination called BARREL. The BARREL system is a modular, multi-vessel unit that utilizes Reverse Osmosis (RO) or Nanofiltration (NF) technology, with a daily processing capacity ranging from 800 to 50,000 cubic meters per unit.
This cutting-edge process offers several distinct advantages: its plug-and-play design enables rapid installation, its compact footprint maximizes space efficiency, and its modular design ensures scalability. Embedded digital sensors facilitate remote monitoring and control. The BARREL solution has been successfully deployed in seawater desalination plants in Oman, France, and other locations worldwide.
Business Cases
Oman
Since 2007, Veolia has been responsible for the construction and operation of this seawater desalination plant in Oman, providing drinking water to over 600,000 local residents. Veolia also installed a photovoltaic power plant at the facility, supplying over one-third of its energy needs and achieving an annual CO2 reduction of 300,000 tons.
Veolia operates a reverse osmosis seawater desalination plant for the local petrochemical complex. The plant produces 178,800 cubic metres of industrial water per day, primarily used for process cooling.
United Arab Emirates
Veolia utilises both distillation and membrane-based technologies at this plant, producing 590,000 cubic metres of desalinated water per day.