King
Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology (KACST) has announced the completed implementation of the first worldwide adsorption water
desalination and cooling plant.
The project began in April 2014 and was
finished in August 2016. Plant development came about through an agreement
among King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), TAQNIA
(Saudi Investment Company) and the Singapore company currently holding the
patent pending rights to the technology, Medad Technologies.
The
technology behind adsorption desalination and cooling (ADC) was recently
developed and is co-owned by National University of Singapore (NUS) and
KAUST. The innovative system allows for the treating of seawater, brine water and other highly polluted industrial wastewater with a minimal amount of
pretreatment, low energy use of below 1.2 KWh/m3, and low OPEX costs of less
than $0.40/m3.
More than
120 countries across the globe utilize the desalination plants, including Saudi
Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Spain, Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, Cape
Verde, Portugal, Greece, Italy, India, China, Japan and Australia.
The UAE
provides more than 80 percent of all drinkable water from seawater desalination
plants. Saudi Arabia, however, is the largest region producing desalinated
water. UAE is second largest.
MEDAD, which
served as the general contractor, partnered with KACST and NET, a Polish
company that complete all aspects of engineering, installation tasks and
manufacturing. Engineers and researchers from KACST took part from beginning
through completion in all aspects of modeling, designing, manufacturing and
installation.
ADC Plant is
currently the world’s largest existing adsorption chiller installation, with a desalinated
water production up to 100m3 per day and cooling capacity of up to 1MW. The
plant was brought to life through the collaboration of KAUST and KACST
developing the semi-industrial scale plant in KACST Solar Village.
