Siemens to deploy electrical equipment at Saudi desalination plants

The A3C consortium has awarded a follow-up order to Siemens to deploy electrical equipment at eight seawater desalination plants in Saudi Arabia.

The consortium includes Rawafid Industrial, Advanced Water Technology (AWT), SETE and Al Fatah.

As part of the deal, Siemens will supply hardware and software engineering, power distribution, PCS7 automation, medium and low voltage converters, Industrial Ethernet communication technology and process instrumentation for the eight plants.

The company will also offer plant commissioning services, which is slated to happen from autumn this year.

Located along the West coast of Saudi Arabia, the new plants use reverse osmosis principle for seawater desalination.

According to the company, the total capacity of the eight plants will be 240,000m² per day. The facilities are expected to consume three kilowatts per cubic meter of produced water.

In a statement, Siemens said: “Almost 95% of water on earth is saline and cannot be used as drinking water or for irrigation purposes. The desalination of seawater provides an opportunity to obtain additional drinking water or process water for people, industry, and agriculture.”

Additionally, Siemens noted that the vertical and horizontal integration of all electrical components is expected to lower operational expenditure costs and reduces maintenance times.

Rawafid Industrial and AWT commissioned Siemens to establish a drinking water production plant on the coast of the Persian Gulf in North East Saudi Arabia in 2017.

The completed Al Khafji reverse osmosis desalination plant is currently being powered by solar energy.