Desalination 495 (2020) 114633

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Desalination
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/desal

The global status of desalination: An assessment of current desalination T

technologies, plants and capacity
⁎
Joyner Ekea, Ahmed Yusufb, Adewale Giwab, , Ahmed Sodiqc
a
Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Kentucky, 177 F Paul Anderson Tower Lexington, KY 40506, United States
b
Department of Chemical Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 127788, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
c
College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This work explores the existing desalination data of over 6 decades (from 1960s to year 2020) to provide an in-
Desalination plants depth assessment, via statistical analysis, of the global spread of desalination, current industrial technologies,
Technologies and current economic indicators, in order to observe possible future expectations. It is observed that the global
Capacities installed desalination capacity has been increasing steadily at the rate of about 7% per annum since year 2010 to
Current status
the end of 2019. Extra-large plants are few but they supply most of the global desalination capacity. There is a
Global trends
sharp rise in the desalination capacities of regions that did not really embrace desalination in the past, including
Europe and Africa. The power industry remains the largest owner of installed capacity for industrial purposes.
Filtration and dissolved air flotation remains the most prominent pretreatment methods. Seawater and
Engineering-Procurement-Construction (EPC) model are the most frequently used feed water and plant delivery
method, accounting for 57% and 71.7% of global installed capacity, respectively. This assessment also reveals
that capital cost accounts for a larger share of the specific cost of water production. The understanding of the
trends is useful to make informed choices for the development of future desalination projects and research.

1. Introduction especially in membrane-based water desalination technologies (such as

As freshwater continues to recede to inaccessible parts of the
aquifers, especially in the world's most vulnerable or water-stressed
regions, research efforts constantly seek new ways to efficiently and
cost-effectively provide potable water from desalination. Until recently,
seawater desalination has been confined to the desert environment,
where surface and groundwater resources are scarce. However, climate
change challenges and other anthropogenic activities have system-
atically forced most near-shore or coaster communities to resort to
seawater desalination as a means of assessing drinking water. Great
advancements in energy recovery equipment and membrane tech-
nology in the last two decades have created two-fold reduction in en-
ergy required to desalinate seawater [1].
Since the year 1928 when desalination plants began to surface in
many world's water stressed cities, desalination technologies have seen
a great upturn; from the first multi-effect distillation (MED) plant (in
1930), to the first multi-stage flash (MSF) distillation plant (in 1957),
down to the first reverse osmosis (RO) plant (in 1965), research ac-
tivities have continued to create better conditions (energy savings, cost
savings and ecological footprints reduction) for freshwater production,
RO). The progress made in desalting seawater affordably has rendered
the process more attractive as an alternative way of providing muni-
cipal water supply. This accounts for why the size and number of de-
salination plants globally have been on the increase at an average an-
nual rate of about 6.8% since 2010, which is equivalent to an average
annual addition of about 4.6 million m3/day production capacity. From
January 2019 to February 2020 alone, the total number of new desa-
lination plants contracted and installed worldwide was 155, providing
an additional installed capacity of 5.2 million m3/day [2].
As at the beginning of July 2016, the global cumulative desalination
capacity for freshwater production stood at 95.6 million m3/day, pro-
vided by 18,983 plants and projects worldwide [3]. Cumulative desa-
lination capacity is the sum of the capacity provided by installed plants
and contracted projects. By the end of 2017 (considering plants built
since 1965), the cumulative desalination capacity worldwide was 99.8
million m3/day, in which the total operating capacity of installed plants
was estimated to be 93% of the installed capacity [4]. As at the mid of
February 2020, the global installed and cumulative desalination capa-
cities for freshwater production stood at 97.2 million m3/day and 114.9
million m3/day, respectively, provided by 20,971 projects [2]. These

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: adewale.giwa@ku.ac.ae (A. Giwa).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2020.114633
Received 4 March 2020; Received in revised form 13 May 2020; Accepted 4 July 2020
0011-9164/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
J. Eke, et al.
20,971 projects included 16,876 installed plants.
Commercial desalination technologies are grouped into two cate-
gories; membrane desalination, mainly RO [5], and thermal desalina-
tion, mainly MED [6] and MSF [7]. Emerging desalination technologies,
that are still in the research and development stages, to a large extent,
include membrane distillation (MD) [8], forward osmosis (FO) [9],
capacitive deionization (CDI) [10], freezing [11], humidification de-
humidification (HDH) [12] and gas hydrate-based (GH) desalination
[13]. In addition, there are a number of supporting or pretreatment
technologies to increase desalination plant efficiency; these include
ultrafiltration (UF) [14], nanofiltration (NF) [15] and ionic filtration
(IF) [16]. Apart from the major standalone desalination technologies,
blends of technologies including MSF-MED [17], MED-adsorption
(MED-AD) [18] and RO-MSF [19] are currently being considered to
increase desalination plant efficiency, by combining the strengths in
each technology such that the blend could overcome deficiencies in
each technology.
Salt removal from seawater consumes a relatively high amount of
energy; in terms of the electric energy required in membrane desali-
nation to overcome the natural osmotic pressure of seawater, or in
terms of both electric and thermal energy required in thermal desali-
nation to vaporize or flash a portion of seawater into distillate. RO
desalination technology, for example, is nearly 8–10 times more en-
ergy-intensive than traditional surface-water (such as lakes and rivers)
treatment technology [1]. The energy required to desalt seawater in
thermal desalination is even higher than that required in RO [4], for
plants that are not combined heat and power plants. The main reason
for this disparity in energy consumption in these two dominant tech-
nologies is the rapid advancement in membrane technology. RO ac-
counts for about 69% share of the installed desalination capacity and
most of the new contracts are awarded with membrane desalination
technologies in mind. There are 14,365 existing (online) RO plants.
MSF and MED account for only 17% and 7%, respectively, of the cur-
rent installed desalination capacity worldwide. Meanwhile, despite (i)
huge resources expended on, (ii) research activities carried out on, and
(iii) fame associated with membrane technologies for water desalina-
tion, the current specific energy required to desalt seawater via these
techniques (especially RO) still hovers around 1.5–4 kWh/m3 (against
0.9 kWh/m3 thermodynamic requirement), depending on the salinity of
the feed water and other external factors [20]. This range is still sig-
nificantly higher than the energy consumption of non-saline surface
water treatment technologies.
Compared to thermal desalination methods, the Achilles heel of RO
is membrane fouling. The most common fouling mechanisms are col-
loidal and particulate, organic, inorganic and biofouling mechanisms.
Hence, pretreatment steps are required to maximize the efficiency of
RO as well as elongate the life span of RO membranes. Most times,
based on the quality of feed water, multiple pretreatment steps may be
required. MSF and MED are the two well-established or mature large-
scale thermal desalination technologies in the world. They are both
assessed based on widely accepted thermal energy performance factors
such as (1) gain output ratio (GOR) and/or (2) performance ratio (PR)
[21]. These factors influence the water production cost. The maximum
operational efficiency, in terms of PR, recorded for an MSF plant is
8.6 kg/2326 kJ, having 24 stages with top brine temperature (TBT) of
112 °C [21], whereas the highest recorded PR for an MED plant is
14.6 kg/2326 kJ with TBT of 70 °C and 16 effects. MSF as a desalination
technology has been around for more than 60 years. Research activities
on this technology have always been focused on the control of two
major factors: corrosion and scale formation [22]. Buildup of scales on
the process equipment limits heat transfer, which leads to high energy
consumption. Although a number of research activities has been re-
ported on antiscalants [23,24] to improve MSF operational efficiency,
each antiscalant comes with additional challenges that have effects on
the overall MSF plant efficiency. The second challenge associated with
MSF technology is corrosion buildup inside the stages. The most
2
Desalination 495 (2020) 114633
important corrosion control strategy is right material selection for the
heat exchange surfaces, especially the condenser tubes [25]. For ex-
ample, the first plants constructed in the GCC used carbon steel as the
material of construction for evaporators but the experience garnered
over the years, coupled with astute research and development in ma-
terial science, has led to new plants being built with corrosion-resistant
alloys [21].
The major technology challenge in MED also involves scale buildup
[26]. As a result, the current MED plants are built with a maximum of
12 effects, operating at TBT of 65 °C. The low value of the temperature
limits the number of effects that can be incorporated to 12. To address
these challenges in thermal desalination technologies, most MSF and
MED plants employ pretreatment options. The salinity of seawater can
be reduced and hardness (Ca2+ and Mg2+) can be removed by pre-
treatment prior to application of either MSF or MED [27]. This allows
TBT to be increased without much penalty of scale buildup [28]. Cost of
desalinated water production is also strongly related to capital cost.
Capital cost contributes more to the specific cost of production than
operating cost.
New trends in seawater desalination around the world are con-
stantly being studied due to the fast pace of research in desalination,
brought about by global demand for cost-effective clean water pro-
duction. In a recent article on application of renewable energy for
seawater desalination, Ahmed et al. [29] espoused the cost reduction
prospects of using solar energy to provide power for RO, MD and other
desalination technologies. However, the global spread of desalination
technologies, which is needed to quantify the scale of solar power in-
stallations required for desalination plants across the world, was
missing from the article. Another study by Lee et al. [30] was focused
on beneficial use of RO brine but this study did not account for the
spread of RO desalination plants across the world in order to compute
the economies of scale of RO brine reuse. Although a recent article on
RO brine by Jones et al. [3] provided the missing information in Lee
et al.'s work on the spread of RO desalination plants, the focus was too
much on the brine and other factors such as current industrial tech-
nologies, the upcoming technologies and current economic indicators
were not significantly taken into account. Other recent studies on de-
salination [31–33] were specifically focused on individual technologies,
rather than examining the current global spread, industrial technologies
and economic indicators. These are the most important factors cur-
rently missing in the literature for researchers working in the field to
adequately predict the future expectation of desalination.
Research focus in membrane desalination technologies is mostly on
reduction of energy consumption through process optimization, novel
materials for desalination, plant location, and a host of other cost re-
duction strategies. The scales of these studies are oftentimes too limited
(i.e. laboratory scales) and the scope is mostly not focused on practical
viability. It is, however, imperative to carry out a comprehensive ana-
lysis of all important parameters that have direct/indirect impacts on
energy and cost on practical operating scales. A holistic assessment of
important desalination parameters in installed and contracted plants
worldwide has been carried out and discussed in this paper. This as-
sessment explores existing desalination data to compute via statistical
analysis: (i) the global spread of desalination, (ii) current industrial
technologies, and (iii) current economic indicators, in order to give
accurate projections of future expectations. Desalination statistics and
model prediction tools are important because these tools help policy-
makers and researchers to understand the trends in key desalination
indices such as production capacity, plant location, feed water source,
technology, energy requirement, cost, treatment efficiency, among
others. The understanding of these trends and indices help policy-
makers and researchers to make choices for the development of new
facilities and on the research areas to focus on, for maximum impact in
the future [34]. Statistical assessment modeling integrates all aspects
including technical, economic, environmental, social, and regulatory
trends in order to achieve future planning and process improvement.
J. Eke, et al.
This assessment is an eye-opener and it would assist desalination plant
managers, operators, and researchers to learn from the successes or
failures of other plants. Statistical trends allow the user to interpret
enormous amount of plant data and the resulting information can be
used to make well-informed decisions. When the reason for such trends
are established, the trends could be useful for providing solutions to
challenges such as the need for more efficient operation in terms of
deployment of resources, optimal selection of plant location, and op-
timal selection of technology based on techno-economic and environ-
mental impact considerations.
2. Methodology
The data for desalination plants, including plant location (country,
region, state/province), location type (land-based, offshore or mobile),
capacity, technology, membrane supplier, membrane type, pretreat-
ment type and supplier, feed water type, award and online dates,
consulting firm, industry type of plant user, plant supplier, plant pro-
curement model, water price, owner/client, and energy recovery
method in 20,971 installed and contracted desalination projects across
181 countries is obtained from Global Water Intelligence's Desaldata
[35]. These desalination plants are located in 3 regions (Asia Pacific;
EMEA – Europe, Middle East, and Africa; and Americas) and 8 sub-
regions (Southern Asia, Eastern Europe/Central Asia, Middle East/
North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, East Asia/
Pacific, Western Europe, and North America). The plants are land-
based, offshore-based, or mobile plants in small, medium, large, and
extra-large (XL) sizes. 10 main technologies are employed in the plants,
including RO, MSF, MED, electrodialysis (ED), NF (nanofiltration), NF
and sulfate removal (NF(SO4)), electrodialysis reversal (EDR), vapor
compression (VC) – as thermal design, forward osmosis (FO), and
membrane distillation (MD) to desalinate several feed water sources,
including brackish water or inland water (TDS 3000 ppm
- below 20,000 ppm), seawater (TDS 20,000 ppm – 50,000 ppm), river
water or low concentrated saline water (TDS 500 ppm
- below 3000 ppm), wastewater, tap water (TDS < 500 ppm), and
brine or concentrated seawater (TDS > 50,000 ppm). Award dates for
the construction of these desalination plants from 1944 to 2020 and
online years from 1969 to 2020 are included in the data. Meanwhile,
the data analysis in Section 3 is based only on the 16,876 plants that are
already online.
The data is analyzed statistically using Python 2.7 due to large vo-
lume of available data. Statistical analysis is carried out to observe the
current status of desalination globally by investigating three aspects of
desalination from the data: (i) global spread of desalination, (ii) current
industrial technologies, and (iii) current economic indicators. A python
code is written to achieve these aspects. The python code is provided as
follows.
import pandas as pd
# it stores all data in df according to their features
df = pd.read_excel(‘Desalination data and analysis.xlsx’,
sheet_name = “Data”)
# feature represents all the important variables such as country,
region, online date, plant type etc.
data name = df.groupby([‘Feature 1’, ‘Feature 2’, ‘Feature 3’])
[‘Capacity (m3/d)’].sum()
# it sorts the indices in the data frame
data_name = data_name. reset_index ()
# coverts the extracted data to CSV file
data_industry.to_csv(‘data_industry.csv’)
print (data_name)
Pandas is imported as pd. on the python interface. The data file is
read by the pd. function and stored in the python workspace. The trends
are extracted by using the group-by ([feature 1, feature 2, …]) [capa-
city]. sum (). Then, the extracted data are exported as CSV files for
better visualization and analysis. The global spread of desalination is
3
Desalination 495 (2020) 114633
examined by computing the desalination capacities in world's regions,
and by evaluating the rising trend of desalination capacity in Africa and
Europe, desalination capacities of industries across the globe, desali-
nation capacities of industries by region, desalinated water capacities
owned by government agencies worldwide, major lenders for desali-
nation projects worldwide, procurement models for desalination pro-
jects and their contributions to global desalination capacity, and the
contributions of major desalination plant suppliers and membrane
manufacturers to global desalination capacity.
The current industrial desalination technologies are examined by
computing and analyzing the trends in the contributions of feed water
sources to global desalination capacity, major technologies employed in
desalination plants to treat different feed water sources, the contribu-
tions of major suppliers of MF/UF pretreatment membranes (for RO) to
global desalination capacity, contributions of disinfection methods and
major suppliers of pretreatment units (for RO) to global desalination
capacity, contributions of emerging industrial desalination technologies
to global desalination capacity, energy recovery devices and mem-
branes employed in current desalination plants, membrane configura-
tions used currently for desalination (of brackish water, brine, river
water, seawater, and wastewater), and the current major suppliers of
membranes. The economic indicators are computed in terms of water
price reported by current large-scale, medium-scale, small-scale, and XL
desalination plants. Small, medium, large, and XL plants are categor-
ized based on the capacity ranges of < 1000, 1000-10,000, 10,000-
50,000, and > 50,000 m3/d, respectively. An economic sensitivity
analysis is carried out to investigate the influence of technology type/
specific energy consumption and plant location on the specific cost of
water production, using Desaldata cost calculator.
Without the analysis carried out in this study, even if data is
available, the following cannot be achieved.
- The cumulative capacities across world's continents;
- The year-on-year increase in cumulative capacities till the current
year;
- The cumulative capacities by product water application and in-
dustrial sector;
- Contributions of government agencies to desalination capacity
worldwide;
- Major lenders to desalination projects;
- Major and minor procurement models;
- Major and minor desalination plant suppliers and consultants;
- Cost of desalinated water production based on plant size, feed water
source, and technology;
- Major technologies employed across the regions and based on plant
size;
- Major disinfection and pretreatment methods;
- Major and minor energy recovery devices and membranes employed
in desalination plants globally;
- Contribution of plant location and technology to desalination cost,
among others.
Although the data is available, the aspects listed above cannot be
achieved without the assessment carried out in this study because the
data available is for individual plants and the data for 20,971 projects
were processed collectively through this assessment.
3. Results and discussions
3.1. Global spread of desalination
3.1.1. Desalination capacity by region
There are approximately 16,876 operational desalination plants,
270 plants under construction, and 3825 offline plants in the world.
There are 14,360 operational RO plants, indicating that RO accounts for
85% of existing operational plants. Also, there are 247 RO plants out of
J. Eke, et al. Desalination 495 (2020) 114633

Table 1
Contributions of land-based, offshore-based, and mobile desalination plants to
global desalination capacity.
Offshore (m3/d) Land-based (m3/d) Mobile (m3/d)

Americas 1,471,064 14,849,898 108,941

Asia Pacific 40,872 20,900,470 2546
EMEA 1,031,025 54,271,137 179,911
Total 2,036,362 69,134,152 67,321

Fig. 2. Rising trend of cumulative (installed) desalination capacity in Africa and

Europe.

Offshore-based desalination capacity is mainly provided by Americas

region, i.e. over 1.4 million m3/d out of a global offshore capacity of
about 2 million m3/d. There are also some mobile desalination units
across the globe, which contribute more than 67,000 m3/d to the global
desalination capacity.
Desalination is fast becoming a conventional method for water
treatment globally; Europe and Africa that did not really embrace de-
salination in the past are gradually fully embracing the concept of de-
Fig. 1. Desalination capacities (a) across world's continents in terms of con-
salination and have increased their cumulative installed capacity in
tributions to the global installed capacity of 97.2 million m3/d, and (b) in terms recent years. As shown in Fig. 2, there is a sharp climb for Europe, from
of cumulative installed capacity and year-on-year increase. a cumulative capacity of 604,274 m3/d in 1990 to a cumulative capa-
city of over 10.6 million m3/d in 2019, an increase of over 1600%. The
desalination capacity in Africa is increasing as well, from a capacity of
the 270 plants under construction, indicating that RO accounts for
425,455 m3/d in 1990 to a capacity of over 7.6 million m3/d in 2020,
about 91% of these plants. Across the continents, as shown in Fig. 1(a),
an increase of over 1700%. These numbers are not shocking, i.e., even
the largest operational desalination plants are available in the Middle
though there is a plethora of conventional freshwater sources in both
East and this sub-region accounts for 39% of the global desalination
regions, desalination is still a viable option because there has been a
capacity. This statistic is not surprising given that this region is fresh
steady population growth rate in these regions (especially Africa) and
water-constrained as a result of limited natural freshwater sources.
hence increase in water demand. The largest desalination plants in
Furthermore, adaptation of desalination regardless of source; seawater,
Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe are Algeria's 500,000 m3/d
brackish water and groundwater is economically intensive, and the
Magtaa plant, Nigeria's 110,040 m3/d Dangote plant under construc-
region has some high per capita income countries. The production ca-
tion, and Spain's 240,000 m3/d Torrevieja plant, respectively. Fur-
pacities of plants in some parts of Europe and Americas are not as par
thermore, innovations in desalination technology has made it to be
with those in the Middle East because of rigid environmental protection
more competitive economically in recent times, when compared to
laws. These laws have been put in place due to the environmental im-
other water treatment technologies [36].
plications (effluent disposal and greenhouse gas emissions, among
Since 2010 to the end of 2019, the capacity of desalinated plants has
others) associated with full-scale desalination as a water treatment
risen steadily at an average annual rate of about 7%, which translates to
approach.
an average growth of over 4.6 million m3/day yearly [36]. Desalinated
Overall, there is an increasing trend of the cumulative capacity of
water is still used mainly as drinking water in municipalities. The cu-
operational desalination plants worldwide, from just 27,252 m3/d in
mulative capacity of plants that currently serve municipal purposes is
1969 to 97.2 million m3/d in 2020 (Fig. 1(b)), although Bennett [36] in
57.3 million m3/d, representing about 59% of global installed capacity
2013 predicted an increase in the total world desalination capacity to
(Fig. 3(a)). 61% of this capacity is served by plants in the Middle East
97.5 million m3/d by 2015. The year-on-year increase in installed ca-
and North Africa. Globally, the largest operational plants in terms of
pacity has also remained positive, from an average of 75% in the 1970s
installed capacity are the Shoaiba 3 and Jubail Plants; these plants serve
to an average of about 7% in the last decade. Incorporating less toxic
municipal drinking water purposes. The largest plants under construc-
chemicals and renewable energy sources as well as creating higher re-
tion are the Taweelah IWP and Umm al Quwain IWP plants. Many in-
coveries could lead to a further surge in global desalination capacity.
dustries also employ desalination but as a means for the reclamation of
Land-based desalination plants provide most of the world's desalination
wastewater produced during industrial processes. The combined in-
capacity (Table 1), amounting to 69.1 million m3/d globally, out of
stalled desalination capacity that serves industrial purposes is 35.3
which over 54.2 million m3/d are provided by the EMEA region.
million m3/d currently, representing 36.3% of global installed capacity.

4
J. Eke, et al.
Fig. 3. Desalination capacities in terms of (a) ownership by application, and (b)
industrial sectors across the globe.
Meanwhile, as regulations become more stringent, the need for meeting
regulatory standards for water discharge becomes more eminent. The
salinity of desalinated water applicable for industrial water reuse
should be less than 10 ppm.
As shown in Fig. 3(b), the power industry is the largest owner of
desalination plants for industrial wastewater treatment, with a capacity
of 6.2 million m3/d. This stems from the fact that water is typically used
to cool electrical generation units. The discharged cooling water also
serves as intake for desalination plants, where it is treated. The size of
electrical generation units has increased and thus the output after
cooling, leading to the need for larger-capacity desalination units. Re-
fineries/chemical and oil and gas industries are in the second and third
place, in terms of desalination capacity, with capacities of 5.2 million
m3/d and 4.1 million m3/d, respectively. Increased upstream and
downstream activities in the oil and gas industry have led to an increase
in desalination plant capacities. These industries employ desalination
technologies to treat produced water, which contains lots of hydro-
carbon pollutants and salts [36]. Other industries that employ desali-
nation as a means of treating their waste effluents are the electronics,
food and beverage, mining, metals, and pulp and paper industries.
The textile industry utilizes a large amount of water for its opera-
tions globally. Most textile companies do not have access to readily
available water sources mainly because of limitations from laws on the
use of groundwater [37] for their operations. Fig. 3(b) shows that de-
salination is not really the go-to method for water treatment for textile
industry operations, as the current desalination capacity of this industry
is only about 262,900 m3/d. Membrane desalination is more expensive
for textile wastewater treatment, compared to the conventional che-
mical and biological methods used for the treatment of textile waste-
water. This may be the reason why desalination is not the preferred
approach for the treatment of textile effluents. High cost of desalination
is mainly due to fouling and scaling issues and maintenance cost. Direct
feed of textile effluents to membrane modules can result in irreversible
fouling.
As a result, the maintenance cost of the modules is increased and
their life time is reduced [38]. Many of the contaminants in textile
5
Desalination 495 (2020) 114633
7 million
6 million
5 million
Capacity (m3/d)
4 million
3 million
2 million
1 million
Electronics
General
Metals
Mining
Textiles
Pulp & paper
Food & Beverage
Oil & Gas
Power
Refining/Chemicals
Asia Pacific EMEA Americas
Fig. 4. Desalination capacities of industries, by region.
effluents carry chronic foulants such as organics including dyes, oils,
fats, finishing agents, preservatives, auxiliary chemicals, among others.
There is also moderate salt content from alkali washes/scouring, neu-
tralization and dye baths [39]. Although these effluents can be pre-
treated by UF to remove the high molecular weight substances before it
is desalinated via NF or RO, these membrane technologies also face the
problem of concentration polarization, resulting in an increase in the
amount of energy required to desalinate to the desired purity and a
reduction in the flux of product water [40]. In addition, the quality of
textile effluents varies widely, depending on the source of the effluent
and batch of operation. Dye-membrane interactions, for example, are
complex and difficult to predict. Most of the studies on UF/NF or UF/
RO for desalination of textile effluents are laboratory-scale research
studies. Apart from industries, desalinated water is also produced for
military purposes, demonstration, irrigation, etc., as shown in Fig. 3(a).
Among global power industries, the power industries in Asia-Pacific
have the largest desalination capacity, producing approximately 3.6
million m3/d of water (Fig. 4). This is also the largest across all in-
dustries in the world. China contributes significantly to this region's
desalination capacity and the largest desalination plant in China is
Tianjin SDIC Desalination Plant (and its extension) in Beijing, produ-
cing 200,000 m3/d. Urbanization and a growing population have in-
creased the demand for desalination systems in the region. The Asia-
Pacific region also has the largest desalination capacity in the refining
and electronics industries, with installed capacities of 2.6 million and
1.46 million m3/d, respectively. In the oil and gas industries, the de-
salination plants with largest capacities are located in Americas and
EMEA regions, with installed capacities of 1.86 million and 1.75 million
m3/d, respectively. Meanwhile, irrespective of the region, the textile
industries have the smallest desalination plant capacities when com-
pared to other industries.
3.1.2. Government agencies and procurement models for desalination
projects
Globally, more government agencies are leading desalination pro-
jects, most especially for municipal applications, as a result of the at-
tractive economic trend projected for desalination in the future as a
cheap source of clean water. The Saline Water Conversion Corporation
(SWCC) in Saudi Arabia, a government parastatal, owns the largest
desalination capacity worldwide, producing over 5.5 million m3/d of
water (Fig. 5), according to available data. They are closely followed by
the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority (ADWEA, now Depart-
ment of Energy) and Ministry of Electricity and Water in Kuwait, with
J. Eke, et al.
Fig. 5. Major desalinated water capacity owned by government agencies
worldwide.
installed capacities of over 3.9 million and 2.9 million m3/d, respec-
tively. The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) in the United
Arab Emirates and Public Utilities Board (PUB) of Singapore have in-
stalled capacities of over 2.3 million and 1.3 million m3/d, respectively.
PUB also employ renewable energy for desalination. Most of the gov-
ernment companies, who own the largest plant capacities, are in the
Middle East and these companies are also electricity companies.
Acuamed in Spain and Saudi Water Partnership Company (SWPC) in
Saudi Arabia own desalination capacities of over 1.1 million and 1
million m3/d respectively. Petrobras in Brazil owns desalination capa-
city of over 988,000 m3/d. Other agencies who own large-scale desa-
lination capacities are Mekorot in Israel and Oman Power and Water
Procurement Company (SAOC). Meanwhile, the capacities provided
here, as owned by government agencies, may be less than the actual
capacities because this assessment is done based on available data only.
In GWI data, the owners of some of the desalination plants are not
provided.
Banks in the Middle East sponsor the highest number of desalination
projects and this is partly responsible for the large desalination capacity
of this region. Meanwhile, the desalination projects are mainly spon-
sored by a consortium of banks, rather than individual banks, due to
their cost-intensive requirements. From Fig. 6, it is observed that a
combination of banks, mainly located in Middle East make up more
than half of the number of banks sponsoring large-capacity desalination
projects in the world. Banks located in Asia follow closely, especially in
Japan and Korea; these banks are also major financiers of desalination
projects making up a quarter of the banks shown in Fig. 6. Lastly
European banks and North African banks finance desalination projects.
Globally, banks in Middle East, Asia, and North Africa are the major
financiers of desalination projects because water scarcity is still a pro-
blem in many parts of these regions and population has increased
considerably in recent years. Likewise, recent technology has led to a
reduction in desalination's environmental footprints over the past years
[41]; this is an advantage that may be used by plant owners to present
desalination as a sustainable venture and increase their bankability.
Huge desalination projects are capital-intensive, so key stakeholders
in large-scale desalination projects are usually public agencies and large
corporations [42]. The public agencies typically provide water from the
source while the private firms are responsible for various desalination-
related engineering, construction and development services. These
partnerships often lead to a reduction in financing costs and an increase
in the efficiency of the whole process. In some cases, the public agencies
run the plants or allow the private firms to own and operate the plants,
based on long-term contractual agreements. Long-term contracts po-
tentially lead to lower, fixed water rates and ensure that capital costs
are repaid over the duration of the partnership. Several procurement
models have been adapted during these collaborations to deliver de-
salination plants, but as shown in Fig. 7(a), the Engineering-Procure-
ment-Construction (EPC) model contributes to about 71.7% of global
(installed) desalination capacity. Out of this amount, 41.1% is located
in the EMEA region, indicating that this region accounts for most of the
6
Desalination 495 (2020) 114633
installed global capacity based on the EPC procurement model
(Fig. 7(b)). In the EPC model, the public parastatal maintains ownership
of the desalination plant and the private firm provides desalination
services, whereby it acts like a service provider [42]. The private
company is also responsible for all operation risks.
The Independent Water and Power Producer (IWPP) model is the
second most common model, contributing to 9.3% of global desalina-
tion capacity. IWPPs sell their capacity or outputs to the public agen-
cies. All of the desalination capacity based on the IWPP procurement
model are located in the EMEA region, as shown in Fig. 7(b). This
model is very complex and requires efficient coordination for success
because it involves several parties. In this model, a single contract is
established between the public body and the private firm (usually a
large organization or an assemblage of several private sector organi-
zations). The goal of this union is typically to ensure that water and
power are provided by the private firm to the public firm. This is
usually over a long period of time, say 30 years. Funding, engineering
design, organization construction and management are typically the
responsibility of the private organization [43]. If the private firm pro-
duces water only, then the model is called Independent Water Producer
(IWP) model. IWP model accounts for less than 1% of global desali-
nation capacity.
The Build-Own-Transfer (BOT) model is the third most common
model, accounting for 6.5% of global desalination capacity, whereby
the public agency provides the private firm with the specific concession
period to build and own the plant. During the concession period, if the
private firm is allowed to operate the plant, then the model becomes
Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) and the private firm collects rev-
enues, operates and maintains the infrastructure. At the end of the al-
located time, everything is transferred back to the public agency [44].
BOOT contributes less than 1% to global desalination capacity. The
design-build-operate (DBO) project delivery model accounts for 4.2% of
global desalination capacity. This model simplifies the procurement
process and removes steps that could increase cost. This model is the
first resort for industrial clients and it fast-tracks projects [45]. The Asia
Pacific region has more desalination capacity based on DBO model than
other regions, representing about 1.9% out of the 4.2% contributed by
this model to global desalination capacity. Procurement models like the
Build-Own-Operate (BOO), the Design-Build (DB), Build-Own-Operate-
Transfer (BOOT), the Independent Water Producer (IWP) and the De-
sign-Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (DBOOT) models are not typically
used for desalination projects; thus they collectively contribute less
than 10% to global desalination capacity. Although these procurement
models have their merits, some constraints that inhibits public sector
involvement includes the lack of appropriate legal framework, de-
struction of infrastructure in case of political unrest, and lack of a
history of private partnership with the public government of a country.
Current companies that provide engineering design, construction
and operation services for large-scale desalination plants include GdF
Suez, Veolia, Doosan, Salini Impregilo, IDE Technologies, Hyflux,
Metito, among others. GDF Suez (ENGIE), Veolia, and Doosan have
contributed to the largest desalination plant capacities worldwide, with
combined capacities of over 30 million m3/d. GDF Suez has contributed
to the largest capacity of 15.1 million m3/d, followed by Veolia with a
capacity of 9.4 million m3/d and Doosan with a capacity of 5.6 million
m3/d (Fig. 8(a)). Salini Impregilo S.P.A and IDE technologies have
contributed to daily desalinated water capacities of about 4.2 million
m3/d and 3 million m3/d, respectively. Hyflux, Metito, Biwater, Ac-
ciona, Sacyr Vallehermoso, and Ferrovial are other large-scale desali-
nation plant construction and operations firms. Cost and funding lim-
itations are limiting factors for the supply of large-capacity plants
worldwide [46]. The technical consulting for these plants are managed
by consulting firms. Fig. 8(b) shows the firms that offer technical
consulting services to global desalination plants and infrastructure,
based on total capacity. KEMA is the major player in this industry,
contributing to about 2.8 million m3/d capacity followed by Fichtner
J. Eke, et al.
Fig. 6. Lenders for major large-scale desalination projects worldwide.
GmbH and Deltares, contributing to about 2.25 million and 1.8 million
m3/d, respectively. The values reported here are based on available
data only.
3.2. Current industrial desalination technologies
3.2.1. Feed water sources used in the desalination industry
The use of seawater as feed water continues to lead and it can be
inferred that seawater is still the major feed water source utilized by
desalination plants globally. Brackish water is the next feed water
source used in large amounts in the desalination industry, followed by
river water. Wastewater is the fourth in rank and brine is the least
employed feed water source for desalination. River water and waste-
water are seldom used for extra-large-scale desalination but some large-
scale desalination plants employ these water sources as feed water. For
example, the largest desalination plants that use river water (with
salinity of less than 3000 ppm) as the feed water are Taiwan's
Kaohsiung Kao-Tan Park plant (300,000 m3/d), Spain's Sant Joan Despí
plant (206,064 m3/d), and United State of America's Glades Road water
treatment plant (151,400 m3/d). RO and NF are the main technologies
used for river water desalting. Meanwhile, while the desalinated water
from river water reverse osmosis (RWRO) is mainly applied for muni-
cipal purposes, the desalinated water from wastewater reverse osmosis
7
Desalination 495 (2020) 114633
(WWRO) is mainly used for irrigation and industrial purposes.
Between 1990 and 2020, there has been about 813% increment in
the cumulative installed capacity of desalination plants, where seawater
is used as feed water globally (Fig. 9). The choice of feed water depends
on total dissolved solids (TDS) or salinity. Over the past three decades,
the concentration of the seawater employed for desalination is between
20,000 ppm and 50,000 ppm; the concentration of brackish water
employed for desalination is between 3000 ppm and 20,000 ppm. Of all
feed water sources used globally by desalination plants, seawater ac-
counts for about 57% whereas brackish water accounts for 20% and
other sources account for the remaining 23% [47]. Fig. 9 shows the
trends, in the last three decades, of global desalination capacity based
on feed water sources. For river water and wastewater, desalination is
mainly used as a polishing step, whereas for brine (with TDS exceeding
50,000 ppm), desalination is used for enhanced water recovery. RO,
MED and FO are the major brine desalination technologies.
Meanwhile, seawater and brackish water remain the most fre-
quently used feed water sources for desalination because these sources
are available in exhaustible amounts in seas, oceans, and large inland
lakes. Most desalination plants focus on these sources, especially sea-
water, because they could achieve their installed capacity or large-scale
requirement from these sources. The feed water used in a desalination
plant also depends on the water resource available in a particular
J. Eke, et al.
Fig. 7. Procurement models for desalination projects and their (a) overall contributions, and (b) contributions by region, to global (installed) desalination capacity.
The contributions of EPC to installed capacity in regions is shown as an inset in 7(b).
region or country. Seawater requires higher energy levels for salt re-
jection due to its relatively high salt concentration. So, seawater desa-
lination is costlier, relative to brackish water desalination. The trends in
the cost of freshwater production using seawater and brackish water
desalination, from 1990 to 2019, are shown in Fig. 10. The average of
all cost values reported for different projects in each year was com-
puted. The average cost of seawater desalination, from the cost values
reported by some plants, has been fluctuating. The peak and lowest
average prices of 1.87 and 0.35 $/m3 were reported in 2012 and 2004,
respectively, for seawater desalination. These prices may have de-
pended on the salinity range of the seawater fed to most of the existing
plants then. The average cost of desalinated water production from
brackish water decreased from 1.53 to 0.4 $/m3 within the period 2002
till 2007. After then, the average cost continued to increase and de-
crease until it reached 0.35 $/m3 in 2018.
Between 1990 till date, the minimum water prices globally are re-
ported for RO plants, compared to MSF and MED plants (Fig. 10(b)).
The global minimum prices for S-, M-, L-, and XL-scale RO desalination
are all lower than the global minimum prices for XL-scale MSF and MED
desalination. From the data analysis, the global minimum prices for S-,
M-, L-, and XL-scale RO desalination are 0.36, 0.298, 0.25, and 0.14
$/m3, respectively, whereas the global minimum prices for XL-scale
MSF and MED desalination are 0.57 and 0.6 $/m3, respectively. Water
prices reported by smaller-scale MSF and MED desalination plants are
8
Desalination 495 (2020) 114633
not contained in the data and as such, cannot be analyzed.
Interestingly, the maximum water prices globally are also reported
for RO plants, indicating that RO water desalination has a wider price
range, compared to MSF and MED. The global maximum water desa-
lination price of 2.46 $/m3 was reported for an XL-scale SWRO tech-
nology employed at the Tugun (Gold Coast) plant in Australia whereas
the global minimum water desalination price of 0.14 $/m3 was reported
for a S-scale RO technology located in Romania (Table 2). The global
maximum water prices reported for MSF and MED technologies at the
XL scale are 1.13 and 1.3 $/m3, respectively, as shown in Fig. 10(b).
These values are lower than the global maximum values reported for
XL-, L-, and M-scale RO desalination as 2.46, 1.9, and 1.95 $/m3, re-
spectively. It is observed from this analysis that the water prices are not
influenced by plant capacity. This analysis also shows that MSF is
cheaper than MED at the XL level, based on the global minimum and
maximum water prices reported for both technologies. The plants,
where these values are reported are shown in Table 2. This difference
may be due to technological advancements that have resulted in the
reduction of: scale, corrosion, and cost of energy (required to achieve
higher top brine temperature in MSF) in certain parts of the world over
the years. A lower global minimum water price of 0.26 $/m3 has also
been reported for XL-scale ED desalination (employed at the
200,000 m3/d Abrera brackish water ED plant in Spain), compared to
its RO, MSF, and MED counterparts.
J. Eke, et al.
Fig. 8. Desalination plant (a) suppliers, and (b) consultants, and their contributions to global desalination capacity.
Fig. 9. Trends in the contributions of feed water sources to global desalination
capacity.
However, this analysis is not all-inclusive, as the water price data for
107 plants only was available and analyzed. In addition, there are some
outliers in the data. A very low water desalination price of 0.21 $/m3 is
reported for an XL RO plant (228,000 m3/d Changi NEWater factory) in
Singapore. This low price is achieved because the feed to the plant is
wastewater. Also, a very high price of 5.17 $/m3 is reported for an XL
RO plant (444,000 m3/d Victorian Seawater Desalination Plant) in
Australia due to high capital cost. So, apart from the technology
9
Desalination 495 (2020) 114633
employed, the cost of water desalination depends on other factors such
as the cost of infrastructure and capital needs, plant location, quality of
feed and product water, source and price of energy, nature of intake
and outfall, regulatory requirements, among others.
3.2.2. Technologies used in the desalination industry currently
Of all desalination technologies which have been deployed so far to
achieve the global desalination capacity, RO technology is the major
technology and has been used extensively to desalinate all types of feed
waters. This is an indication that the technology is well developed.
Fig. 11(a) shows the contributions of different technologies (for treating
different feed water sources) to the global desalination capacity. Large
amounts of freshwater are being produced in RO desalination plants
daily, with production mainly from seawater and brackish water
sources and with cumulative installed capacities of 30.6 million m3/d
and 17.8 million m3/d, respectively. MSF is the next prominent tech-
nology after RO. Seawater is also the main feed water for MSF tech-
nology – used in desalination plant with combined capacity of about
15.3 million m3/d. About 3.3 million and 2.3 million m3/d desalination
capacities are provided via seawater using MED and NF & NF (SO4)
technologies, respectively. Meanwhile, ED/EDI/EDR account for a ca-
pacity of a meagre 122,000 m3/d using seawater as the feed water,
globally, because ED is not yet a mature technology for seawater de-
salination. The favorable utilization of seawater RO (SWRO) or brackish
water RO (BWRO) is associated with the fact that the total energy re-
quirement of SWRO (3–4 kWh/m3) or BWRO (0.5–2.5 kWh/m3) is less
J. Eke, et al.
Fig. 10. The price of desalinated water, as shown by the (a) trends in the average costs of seawater and brackish water desalination and (b) cost of water desalination,
based on technology and plant size.
compared to the energy required by other thermal desalination tech-
nologies like MSF (10–16 kWh/m3) and MED (5.5–9 kWh/m3). There-
fore, it is possible to produce clean water at a cheaper rate with RO than
with MSF or MED, if all other factors mentioned previously are favor-
able.
Another attractive feature of RO is the possibility to handle highly
concentrated feed water like brine; RO accounts for a capacity of
129,336 m3/d from brine (re)desalination – an amount that is far higher
than the combined contribution of all other desalination technologies to
brine (re)desalination (Fig. 11(b)). However, while RO seems to have
economic advantage than the distillation processes, it is still limited by
the challenge of membrane fouling. Regions like the Middle East have
continued to rely on the use of thermal distillation desalination tech-
nologies for the production of about half of their total desalination
production capacity. The reason is simply due to membrane fouling.
The Red Sea and Gulf Sea, in particular, have extremely high salinity.
Cost of replacing membranes will significantly affect the operating cost
of any RO plant operating in this region (especially for fresh water
recovery from brine) [47], although the recent and newly contracted
plants in this region are mostly RO plants due to advances in RO
membrane cleaning.
As expected, XL-scale plants account for the largest proportions of
the global desalination capacity contributed by each of the dominant
technologies, i.e. RO, MSF, and MED (Fig. 11(c)). XL-scale plants ac-
count for 39% of global installed RO capacity, whereas L-, M-, and S-
scale plants account for 33%, 24%, and 4% of global installed RO ca-
pacity, respectively. XL-scale plants account for even higher
10
Desalination 495 (2020) 114633
proportions of the global installed capacities of MSF and MED plants,
representing 89% and 54%, respectively. The reason for this observa-
tion is that seawater is the feed source in most of the plants that employ
these dominant technologies. So, XL-scale plants were constructed to
justify the large capital cost required to take water out of the sea.
However, the global installed capacities of NF-based and ED-based
plants are mostly provided by L- and M-scale plants, respectively. L- and
M-scale plants account for 59% and 44% of the global installed capacity
of NF-based and ED-based desalination, respectively. The reason for this
observation is that brackish water is the feed water source in most of
the plants that employ NF-based and ED-based technologies so as to
avoid high feed osmotic pressure (in NF) and electrical energy re-
quirement (in ED).
So, the water fed to RO is pre-treated to avoid membrane fouling
and cost-related issues. The commonly used pre-treatment methods in
current RO desalination plants are UF, Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF),
MF, and Dual Media Filter (DMF) filtration, based on available data
(Table 3). MF, UF, DAF, and DMF, as pretreatment methods, are used to
provide higher RO desalination capacities globally, compared to their
counterparts. The Seaguard UF membranes are mostly used. Flat-sheet
ceramic replaced GE Zeeweed, HydraCap60 UF and Seaflex UF are also
common-place. Other notable pre-treatment membranes used in the
desalination industry include dizzer XL modules, ZW1000 UF mem-
branes, Ceramic UF membranes replaced Memcor CMF-S, 672 Kristal
UF modules, among others. DAF is employed to remove bio-foulants,
including suspended solids and algae. DAF pretreatment units are
mainly supplied by Pentair X-flow, Hyflux and Suez. Meanwhile,
J. Eke, et al. Desalination 495 (2020) 114633

majority of the pretreatment approaches employed in current desali-

880,000 m3/d Shoaiba 3 seawater desal plant, Saudi Arabia

nation plants are combined approaches involving multiple technologies

940 m3/d Romania brackish water desal plant, Romania

1850 m3/d Salwa Brackish water Resort Project, Qatar
(rather than a single technology), as shown in Table 3. Combined ap-
proaches are needed, most especially when the feed water has been

454,200 m3/d Al Fujairah 2 seawater MED, UAE

200,000 m3/d Abrera brackish water ED, Spain
exposed to suspended matter and particulates, including silt, algae and
318,500 m3/d Tuaspring (Tuas II), Singapore

fine solids. The pretreatment approaches for MSF and MED technolo-
22,500 m3/d Zahedan BWRO 1–2, Iran

gies are not available in the data; therefore, they are not analyzed in
this study. In addition, the data available for the pretreatment tech-
nologies employed in RO plants is incomplete. The pretreatment tech-
nologies employed in most of the XL- and L-scale plants in Middle East
and North Africa are not available in the data.
Aside membrane filtration, DMF has been shown to be one of the
prominent pretreatment technologies for desalination in many recent
articles [48–50]. In fact, DMF was recognized to be the most widely
used and traditional pretreatment technology in seawater desalination
and these granules are mainly natural beds [49]. The year of in-
Plant

troduction of DMF and other pretreatment technologies for RO, as re-

ported in literature, are shown in Table 4. Sand and anthracite coal are
the two traditional granules in the filtration vessels used as the pre-
Online year

treatment stages of single- and/or dual-filters. After screening trash

from the intake seawater (which constitutes the initial pretreatment)
2013
2011
2016
2017

2009
2010
2008

and then coagulation/flocculation, DMF (typically single-stage DMF;

anthracite and sand) and cartridge filter steps are traditionally used as
pretreatment to reduce particulate fouling and turbidity [50]. Before
DMF, ferric salts are used to coagulate and flocculate colloidal particles
Minimum price

and dissolved organics in feed water. Sulfuric acid is dosed to provide

optimal pH for improving the coagulation performance.
RO feed is also pretreated by disinfection. Chlorination is the
0.298
0.36

0.25
0.14

0.57

0.26
0.6

dominant disinfection method, in terms of desalination capacity

(Fig. 12). This might be due to its cost-effectiveness and efficiency. GWI
data does not provide the disinfection method used in many desalina-
tion plants but with respect to the limited data provided, chlorination is
133,000 m3/d Tugun (Gold Coast) seawater desal plant, Australia

employed as a disinfection method in 83.4% of the desalination plants

54,552 m3/d Yanbu (Marafiq) seawater MED, Saudi Arabia

included in the data, accounting for a combined capacity of over 4.6

million m3/d. Other common disinfection approaches in the desalina-
4315 m3/d San Andres seawater desal plant, Colombia

459,146 m3/d Shuweihat 2 seawater desal plant, UAE

tion industry are the use of chlorine dioxide and UV irradiation.

600 m3/d Bahamas seawater desal plant, Bahamas
30,000 m3/d Paphos seawater desal plant, Cyprus

Aside RO and MSF (and MED), other technologies including MD,

EDR, FO, freeze desalination (FR), and hybrid technologies have
evolved in the real operating desalination plants. To understand how
competitive these emerging desalination technologies have evolved,
Table 5 shows the contributions of these technologies to global (in-
stalled) desalination capacity and the feed water sources, through
which desalination is achieved using these technologies. These emer-
Global minimum and maximum water prices by technology and plant size.

ging desalination technologies contribute less than 1% to global desa-

lination capacity but they have a great potential for application in zero
liquid discharge applications. The hybrid technologies exhibit the po-
tential to increase water recovery and reduce overall specific energy
consumption. EDR is currently employed in plants using brackish water
Plant

N/A

and seawater as the feed water sources, with cumulative capacities of

16,320 m3 and 1892 m3/d, respectively. Brackish water EDR plants are
located mainly in the United States of America whereas the largest
seawater EDR plant is located in Singapore. Brackish water is mostly
Online year

used in EDR plants, and this appears to be due to its relatively better
Water prices for RO desalination technology

accessibility (as an inland water source) and low level of salinity

2009
2011
2017
1997

2011
2012
N/A

(compared to seawater), as brackish water requires less electricity

Water prices for other (XL) technologies

consumption than seawater in EDR. In general, EDR seems to have

more potential to utilize various types of low-salinity feed water in-
Maximum price

cluding brackish water and river water.

MD is also a growing desalination technology that combines dis-
tillation and membrane technology, and seawater is the main feed
water used in this process currently. The current cumulative capacity of
2.46

1.95
1.25

1.13

N/A
1.9

1.6

MD plants is only 2560 m3/d and these plants are located in Singapore
and Maldives, i.e. Singapore's Jurong Island and Senoko plants with
installed capacities of 2400 and 50 m3/d, respectively and Maldives'
Table 2

MED
MSF

Kunfunadhoo Island and Gulhi plants with installed capacities of 100

ED
XL

M
L

and 10 m3/d, respectively. Of all these emerging technologies, FO is

11
J. Eke, et al. Desalination 495 (2020) 114633

Fig. 11. Major technologies employed in desalination plants to treat different feed sources, including (a) conventional desalination feed sources (seawater and
brackish water), (b) unconventional feed sources, and (c) percentage contributions of plant size to the total installed capacity for each technology. Some bars are not
shown in Fig. 11(a) due to the scale used in the horizontal axis but the numbers represented are shown.

Table 3
Pretreatment methods employed in current RO desalination plants and cumulative capacities served by these methodsa.
Process Capacity (m3/d) Pretreatment system

UF 10,178,509 As standalone UF or combined with Coagulation-Flocculation, DAF, DMF, MF, Anti Scaling Inhibition, Single-stage Sand Filtration,
Acidification, Sedimentation, or Disinfection.
DAF 5,265,871 As standalone DAF or combined with Coagulation-Flocculation, DMF, UF, MF, Multi-media Filtration (MMF), or Single Stage Sand Filtration.
DMF 5,265,368 As standalone DMF or combined with Coagulation-Flocculation, Sedimentation, DAF, UF, MF, or Two Stage Sand Filtration, Acidification, or
Anti Scaling Inhibition.
MF 2,634,964 As standalone MF or combined with Coagulation-Flocculation, DAF, DMF, Anti Scaling Inhibition, Single-stage Sand Filtration, Acidification,
Sedimentation, or Disinfection.
Sand filtration 1,046,195 As standalone Single-stage or Two-stage Sand filtration or combined with Coagulation-Flocculation, Anti Scaling Inhibition, Sedimentation,
Acidification, DMF, UF, MF, MMF, or Disinfection.

a
The methods that account for the largest cumulative capacities only are shown.

12
J. Eke, et al. Desalination 495 (2020) 114633

Table 4
Years of introduction of pretreatment technologies.
Current pretreatment technologies in RO plants Year of introduction Ref.

DMF 1979 [51]

Electrocoagulation 1987 [52]
MF Mid 2000s [53]
UF Mid 2000s [54]
Thin film nanocomposite membranes Emerging [55]
Fiber media filtration Emerging [56]
Deep bed biofiltration Emerging [56]
Ceramic membranes Emerging [56]

Fig. 13. Suppliers of energy recovery devices employed in desalination plants

100 and their contributions to current desalination capacity.
83%
80 Chlorination
Capacity (%)

UV irradiation
60 Chlorine dioxide

40

20 13.4%
3.2%

RO Disinfection

Fig. 12. The major disinfection methods used in current RO plants.

Table 5
Fig. 14. Membrane types employed in desalination plants and their contribu-
Cumulative capacities of plants in m3/d contributed by emerging desalination
tions to annual desalination capacity.
technologies, based on feed water sources.
Feed water Cumulative capacity (m3/d)
The suitability of an energy recovery device depends on the type of
MD FO EDR Hybrid FR membrane used in a desalination process. Fig. 14 shows the commonly
employed membrane types in desalination technologies for the past one
Brackish water 0 0 16,320 16,320 0
and a half decade. The most commonly used membrane types are the
Wastewater 0 2014 9485 4900 5938
River water 0 0 25,430 0 0 spiral wound, hollow fiber, dual spiral wound/hollow fiber, dual spiral
Seawater 2560 150 1892 0 0 wound/flat, and tube types, among others. The spiral wound membrane
Brine 0 3600 0 0 0 type has been used to achieve 87% of global desalination capacity. The
hollow fiber type has been used to achieve about 10% whereas the
remaining 3% has been achieved using other membrane types. The
suitable for brine treatment and is currently been leveraged on due to spiral wound type is currently being deployed faster than the other
its potential to improve water recovery from other standalone desali- membrane types, with over 50% increase in the installed capacity
nation technologies such as RO [57]. The largest FO plant is located in achieved from its use in the last decade alone. However, the membrane
China and has a capacity of 2800 m3/d. FO plants have also been de- types used in only 7741 plants are provided in GWI data and this
veloped in Oman, India, and UAE. limited information is used to carry out the estimation shown in Fig. 14.
The actual capacities are expected to be higher than the ones shown in
Fig. 14.
3.2.3. Energy recovery devices and membranes used in current plants
It is not surprising that spiral wound is the most commonly used
These emerging technologies are also expected to complement the
membrane type because this type can be used for the desalination of all
energy recovery devices in conventional desalination plants, which are
categories of feed water sources, including seawater, brine, river water,
devices that are used to recover pressure energy from fluids such as
and wastewater, as shown in Fig. 15. Compared to other membrane
brine. The suppliers of energy recovery devices used in desalination
types, the spiral wound membrane configuration has contributed to a
plants and the cumulative capacities of plants, in which such devices
significantly higher desalination capacity worldwide, from all feed
are installed, are shown in Fig. 13. Pressure exchangers are still the
water sources, as evident in Fig. 15. Closely following the spiral wound
most commonly employed energy recovery devices, followed by turbo
type, in terms of desalination capacity, is the hollow fiber and dual
chargers. Other energy recovery devices installed in current desalina-
configurations. So, spiral wound and hollow fiber types are still the
tion plants include Pelton turbine, work exchangers, and Francis tur-
most preferred membrane types in desalination plants worldwide.
bine. The least utilized device among the popular ones is the wind-
Spiral wound or SWM is preferred because it offers large active area
powered device. The energy recovery devices including pressure ex-
density, physical durability or more resistance to wear due to pressure,
changes, turbo chargers, and Pelton turbine supplied by Energy Re-
and longer membrane life. Hollow fiber configuration is known to
covery Inc. (ERI) and its collaborators are currently being used to
provide high packing density.
achieve the largest desalination capacity globally. ERI devices are used
Membranes supplied by Toray Industries, Inc. contribute to the
in plants with a combined (installed) capacity of over 15.9 million m3/
largest share of desalination capacity worldwide. Membranes supplied
d. Meanwhile, the energy recovery devices in only 344 online plants are
by Toray Industries and its partners (Nitto Denko, Dupont, among
provided in GWI data and the estimation in Fig. 13 is based on this
others) are mainly used in RO, ED/EDI, and NF plants. Membranes
limited data.

13
J. Eke, et al.
Fig. 15. Membrane types used for the desalination of various feed water
sources, based on % contributions to total capacity.
supplied by Dow FilmTec, Hydranautics, and Pentair are also promi-
nent membranes in current desalination plants, in terms of the capacity
of desalination plants.
3.3. Economic indicators in current desalination plants
The main economic indicator is the cost of water production. This
cost varies with the size of desalination plants. Other economic con-
siderations are return on investment and profitability. Currently,
against the traditional norms of economies of scale, it is costlier to
produce freshwater from large-scale plants than from small-scale plants.
As shown in Fig. 16(a), from analysis of 2017 GWI data, the average
specific costs of producing freshwater (SCW) in small and medium-scale
seawater desalination plants are computed as US$0.55 and US$0.51,
respectively. For large and extra-large (XL) seawater desalination
plants, the average costs of freshwater production are computed as US
$1.0 and US$0.99, respectively. This trend may be due to the capital-
intensive nature of desalination and in today's desalination projects,
capital costs account for the significant chunk of the total cost.
The capital costs are mainly due to pretreatment, civil works,
pumps, plant design, legal and professional services, installation ser-
vices, membranes, pressure vessels, high-grade alloy piping, intake/
outfall, and energy recovery devices. According to analysis computed
from the data obtained from Desaldata, capital cost would account for
52% of the total cost of desalination (Fig. 16(b)) for this following
particular case/scenario: RO desalination plant capacity of
150,000 m3/d located in United Arab Emirates, typical intake/outfall,
seawater salinity of 35,000 ppm, seawater minimum temperature of
15 °C, seawater maximum temperature of 38 °C, difficult pretreatment,
25% second pass, re-mineralization, 95% utilization rate, energy con-
sumption of 3.5 kWh/m3, electricity price of 0.025 $/kWh, 6% interest
rate, 12% equity yield, 20 years of loan repayment, and 75% debt-
equity split. The operating costs for this particular case accounts for
48% of the total cost of freshwater production, i.e. the cost of spare
parts, chemicals, labor, membrane replacement, electrical energy, and
overheads. However, this value is not a generic value but it is sensitive
to certain conditions such as the country of plant location and specific
energy consumption (SEC) of the desalination process, even when other
conditions are kept constant. SEC is the energy consumed per unit of
water production and it is dependent on the technology employed. SEC
has a multiplier effect on the total energy requirement, i.e. depending
on the total volume of production. Plant location determines the unit
cost of electricity, which also influences the total cost of electricity
consumed by the plant.
Therefore, a sensitivity analysis is carried out to evaluate the effect
of changes in SEC on the energy cost. The energy cost is re-calculated
for 5 more cases including: 3 more RO scenarios with different SEC
values, i.e. 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0 kWh/m3; MED with an average SEC value of
2.0 kWh/m3; and MSF with an average SEC value of 5.0 kWh/m3. It is
14
Desalination 495 (2020) 114633
observed that the energy cost depends strongly on the SEC value and
technology employed. The energy cost as a % of the total cost, using RO
technology, increases from 14% to 15%, 16%, and 19%, as the SEC is
changed from 3.5 kWh/m3 to 4.0, 4.5, and 5.0 kWh/m3, respectively
(Fig. 16(c)). Also, the energy cost increases to 18% and 21%, when the
technology is changed to MED and MSF with SEC values of 2.0 and 5.0
kWh/m3, respectively. The SEC values of MED and MSF, as provided
here, are the specific electrical energy consumption only.
Another sensitivity analysis is carried out to evaluate the effect of
changes in plant location on the energy cost. The plant location is
changed from UAE to countries in other regions across the world, in-
cluding USA, China, Spain, and Algeria. It is observed that plant loca-
tion influences the energy cost (Fig. 16(d)). This influence is due to
different electricity prices in these countries. The unit price of elec-
tricity in UAE, as provided in Desaldata database, is $0.025/kWh
whereas the unit price in each of USA, China, Spain, and Algeria is
$0.05/kWh. The energy cost, as a % of the total cost, increases from
14% in the UAE to 18%, 25%, 21%, and 24%, in USA, China, Spain, and
Algeria, respectively, under the same operating conditions. Meanwhile,
the cost of water production estimated for UAE, China, and Algeria are
0.66, 0.68, and 0.70 $/m3, respectively, whereas the cost of water
production estimated for USA and Spain are higher, i.e. 0.96 and 0.81
$/m3, respectively due to higher labor and overhead costs in these
countries.
So, being capital-intensive, large and XL desalination plants exhibit
higher production costs, as shown in Fig. 16(a), due to higher con-
tribution of capital cost to their total production cost. As shown in
Fig. 16(b), capital cost accounts for 52% of the cost of water production
by the hypothetical SWRO case in the UAE. This estimation is also
supported by a recent study, wherein the capital and operating costs in
desalination plants across Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region
were analyzed [58]. For each technology employed, the average capital
cost for desalination in the MENA region exceeded the average oper-
ating cost, as shown in Table 6. This means that capital cost deserves
more research attention than it gets currently, in order to reduce the
cost of water desalination. Most of the current research efforts have
been focused disproportionately on how to reduce operating cost.
Future research efforts should be focused on the optimization of
both capital and operating costs, as this analysis has shown that both
cost components are important. Theoretically, SEC should reduce with
increasing plant capacity as previously supported by the work of Kim
et al. [59]. This decline was mostly observed for plant capacity of less
than or equal to 100,000 m3/day. Larger SWRO plants are not always
energy-efficient because the plants consist of several pump stations.
Efficiency of the pumps are strongly correlated to the capacity of pump
stations than to the SWRO system. Therefore, energy consumption in
this case can be increased due to limited capacity of pumps, leading to
an increase in the number of pumps needed in the RO system. To make
large SWRO plants become energy-efficient and reduce the SEC in these
plants, larger pump capacities are required because of their high effi-
ciency. In the light of this, pressure-centered design is emerging for
large-capacity plants. This design involves the location of high-pressure
pumps (HPP), booster pumps (BP) and energy recovery devices (ERD)
in the middle trains of a RO system. The operation involves pressurizing
the feed with large pumps in the middle of the RO trains, thereby in-
creasing the pump efficiency above that of a typical system. IDE tech-
nologies Ltd. have recently developed this system and it has been ap-
plied in many large-scale SWRO plants in Israel namely: Ashkelon [60],
Hadera [61] and Sorek [62].
Meanwhile, for each plant size category, RO still accounts for the
most significant share of total production capacity. Globally, RO con-
tributes: 19 million m3/d to the overall capacity of XL plants, 17.3
million m3/d to the overall capacity of large-scale plants, 12.1 million
m3/d to the overall capacity of medium-scale plants, and 2 million m3
to the overall capacity of small-scale plants. MSF and MED are also two
prominent technologies used in XL plants especially in the Middle East,
J. Eke, et al. Desalination 495 (2020) 114633

(caption on next page)

15
J. Eke, et al.
Fig. 16. (a) Cost of water desalination using different technologies in large-scale, medium-scale, small-scale, and extra-large desalination plants; (b) cost components,
showing the capital-intensive requirement of large-scale plants; and the influence of (c) SEC and (d) plant location on the energy cost (as % of total cost).
Table 6
Specific (average) capital and operating costs in the MENA region for desali-
nation using different technologies [58].
Technology Average capital Average operating Total cost
cost ($/m3) cost ($/m3) ($/m3)
SWRO Mediterranean Sea 0.63 0.35 0.98
Hybrid SWRO 0.68 0.35 1.03
Hybrid MSF/MED 0.92 0.23 1.15
SWRO Arabian Gulf 0.71 0.64 1.35
SWRO Red Sea 0.87 0.51 1.38
MED-TVC 1.25 0.14 1.39
MSF 1.18 0.26 1.44
accounting for 11.2 million and 3.3 million m3/d of the overall XL
desalination capacity, respectively. NF with sulfate reduction (SR) are
used mainly in large-scale plants. ED-based plants are mainly large-
scale or medium-scale, whereas the emerging industrial technologies
(EDR, FO, and MD) are mainly utilized in small-scale and medium-scale
plants.
4. Conclusions
From the statistical analysis carried out in this study, it can be
concluded that global desalination capacity has been increasing steadily
at a rate of about 7% per annum since year 2010 to the end of 2019. In
the least expected regions, i.e. Europe and Africa, there is a sharp rise in
desalination capacity, i.e. over 1600% and over 1700% increase in
Europe and Africa, respectively, over the last three decades. This points
to a growing need of freshwater caused by climate change challenges
and population growth. The power industry is the largest producer of
desalinated water (apart from municipal desalination plants), with a
capacity of 4.6 million m3/d. Seawater is still the most important feed
water source in the desalination industry, in terms of its contribution to
the overall desalination capacity. Over the past three decades (year
1990 to 2019), the installed capacity of desalination plants utilizing
seawater as feed increased by 813% globally. Currently, seawater ac-
counts for about 57%, whereas brackish water accounts for 20% and
other sources account for the remaining 23% of the feed water em-
ployed in desalination plants, based on plant capacity. The cost of
seawater desalination ranged between 0.35 and 1.87 $/m3 whereas the
cost of brackish water desalination varied from 0.35 to 1.53 $/m3 till
year 2019. RO technology contributes the largest share of desalinated
water production currently, accounting for production capacities of
30.6 million and 17.8 million m3/d, using seawater and brackish water
as feed water, respectively. UF, chlorination disinfection, and DAF are
the predominant pretreatment methods in the RO desalination industry,
according to available data. However, DMF has also been recognized as
a predominant pretreatment technology in many recent studies. It is
costlier to produce freshwater from large-scale plants than from small-
scale plants due to the capital-intensive nature of desalination. Capital
cost exceeds operating cost and accounts for a higher proportion of the
cost of producing desalinated water, using the prominent technologies.
Currently, emerging industrial technologies (EDR, FO, and MD) are
utilized in small-scale and medium-scale desalination plants.
However, there are certain limitations of this study. There are some
missing data in the data obtained from Desaldata. Complete information
is not provided for all plants, i.e. information such as location type,
water production cost, managing agencies, procurement models, con-
struction and operations and consulting firms, feed water source, pre-
treatment method, membrane type, and energy recovery device are not
provided for some plants. These missing data might have caused some
uncertainties in the desalination capacities computed for the different
16
Desalination 495 (2020) 114633
aspects of this study. However, the results are still a reflection of the
industry, as confirmed from other cited sources in the discussions.
Future analysis should focus on the environmental impacts of desali-
nation. Currently, data on greenhouse gas emissions and impacts of
reject brine from desalination plants are either scarce or unavailable.
Such data could be prepared in the future through the life cycle as-
sessments of the plants and analysis of overall impacts resulting from
desalination globally. Also, plants utilizing specific integrated tech-
nologies (MSF + RO, MED + RO, RO + MD, etc.) could be included in
the data and analyzed. The analysis in this paper is based only on the
identification of trends and their implications on desalination globally.
Non-linear data analysis and in-depth correlational analysis using hy-
brid statistical tools should be carried out in the future to observe the
relationships between different desalination variables on practical
scales. An artificial intelligence (AI)-based model such as Artificial
Neural Network (ANN) model may be employed in the future for ad-
vanced multivariate analysis of the variables discussed in this paper.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ-
ence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
Authors would like to thank Khalifa University of Science and
Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates for GWI Desaldata's
subscription.
CRediT author statement
Joyner Eke: Investigation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review
& editing. Ahmed Yusuf: Data curation, Methodology, Investigation,
Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Adewale Giwa:
Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing - original draft,
Writing - review & editing, Supervision. Ahmed Sodiq: Investigation,
Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.
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