Masdar pits energy companies against each other in the name of clean water

Dr Sultan Al Jaber, Minister of State and Chairman of Masdar, attends Monday’s launch of small-scale experimental desalination plants in the company’s Ghantoot pilot centre. Mona Al Marzooqi / The NatShow more

ABU DHABI // Over the next year and a half, four companies will compete against each other to come up with ideas to meet the UAE’s potable water demands in a more environmentally friendly way.

On Monday, the four companies – Abengoa, Suez Environment, Sidem/Veolia and Trevi Systems – began operating small-scale experimental desalination plants in Masdar’s Al Ghantoot pilot facility.

Combined, the separate projects will desalinate 1,500 cubic metres of water per day, or enough for 500 homes, aiming to use about a third less energy than standard plants.

They have a target of using less than 3.6 kilowatt hours per cubic metre of water – the average non-renewable energy desalination plants run at about 5 kWh/m3.

“In our region, water is more important than oil and we are trying to find solutions to -address that,” said Dr Ahmad -Belhoul, Masdar’s chief executive.

“Desalination is an energy-intensive process, in the UAE energy is water and water is energy, therefore to provide a sustainable solution to water we have to work on the sustainability side.”

Despite the small scale of the test project, Masdar will assess the results of each projects after a year and a half, and select one to scale up.

“Energy and water are our focus,” said Dr Bahjat Al Yousuf, interim provost, Masdar Institute. “We are looking at water in ways of making it more economical, more commercially viable, and thereby more efficient in its use.”

She said that the project would allow the companies to test the viability of powering desalination stations through renewable energy.

The test-site which Masdar launched on Monday uses solar energy for the heating stage of desalination, but it is the second stage – osmosis – which the companies will be aiming to refine.

“We have a tremendous opportunity to combine solar and desalination. We have different programmes in place and in this project we must drive … the technology with solar,” Carlos Cosin, chief executive of the company with the largest capacity test project, Abengoa, said.

All the companies are using osmosis, or the process of separating brine from water by moving it through a filtration membrane. The result is potable water and a concentrated brine.

In the past, the brine was simply reintroduced into the ocean, but now the companies working in the desalination plant in Al Ghantoot are each trying to make use of the by-products in the brine.

​Abengoa, Sidem and Suez are using “reverse osmosis”. John Webley, chief executive of Trevi Systems, however, said his was the only company using “forward osmosis”, despite being advised not to call it that.

“It should be named just ‘osmosis’, but that wouldn’t be very interesting to you,” he said.

“If you are trying to do something better, you have to do something brand new.”

Mr Webley said forward osmosis had been around since the 1960s, but it was gaining popularity now as new technologies allowed them to be more efficient.

“It’s the difference between Betamax and VHS,” he said.

“We are hoping to use half the energy. We don’t see it as competing and I am hopeful that we will make better use of waste.”

Dr Belhoul said that when they had the opening for companies to apply to be part of the four to operate their pilot they had the choice to choose only reverse osmosis projects but chose against that.

“We said, you know what, we are willing to take that risk and proving it to the local stakeholders, because to have the best potential answer we have to look into all technologies, the proven ones and the more promising ones,” Dr Belhoul said.