Operation Experience ARWADEX 2009

Operational Experience of “The Only” Sea-based Desalination Plant in the World

Rami S. Abu Amirah - A.ABUNAYYAN Trading Corp.Sanjeev Unni - Dow Water SolutionsSyed Sami Ahmed - WETICO Berkefeld Filter

April 7, 2009

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INTRODUCTION

The Shoaiba Barge SWRO is one of Saudi Arabia’s largest Reverse Osmosis Desalination Plant and the World’s only sea-based desalination plant

The Shoaiba Barge SWRO project is located 100km south of Jeddah Plant consists of two Barges, each with a capacity of

26,000m3/day First barge has been in operation since May 2008, feeding

potable quality water to SWCC network Source of Raw water is from a shallow region of the Red Sea

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System Design

• Pre-treatment - Ultra Filtration• RO Design - Two Pass• Membranes - FILMTEC™ SW30HRLE-400i

FILMTEC™ BW30-440i • Capacity - 52,000m3/day• TDS - 100mg/l (second pass)

• OEM - WETICO Saudi Berkefeld

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System Design

Pass 1 Number of Trains - 12 Pressure Vessels - 22 per Train Element Type - FILMTEC™SWHRLE-400i

Pass 2 Number of Trains - 4 Number of Stages - Two Pressure vessels - 29 Element Type - FILMTEC™ BW30-440i

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General Membranes Features

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Automation

Consistent and accurate active

surface area Precise and uniform glue lines Shorter leaves to ensure lower fouling

potential and Lower back pressure Thick feed spacer to offer

performance stability against fouling

with efficient cleanability

Inter-Locking-End-Cap

RO used patented iLEC ™ inter-locking-end-cap technology from Dow Chemical Company.

The iLEC “inter-lockingend cap” technology provides one of the highest mechanical integrities together with simple and faster installation

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General Membranes Features

Operation

Since start-up, the first barge has provided consistently high product water quality at flows according to the specifications

The permeate TDS of the first pass has been consistently below 300 mg/l. This allowed the end user to feed the full first pass product flow into the distribution network

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Operation

Due to excellent first pass product quality, the end user decided to operate the second pass only in an emergency.

Normalized data show the evolution of the plant performance

The second barge started on March 2009

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Train 2 Normalized Permeate Flow

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Train 2 Norm. Salt Passage & Rejection

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Train 2 Differential Pressure

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Evaluation RO System in Barge 1 is in operation for more almost 16

months since start-up with no Cleaning Very small permeate flow variation is noticed in

Normalized Permeate flow Salt rejection and Salt passage is consistent Differential Pressure slowly increased as a sign of slow

Bio-fouling Membrane cleaning is required to improve system

performance

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When to Clean??

Elements should be cleaned whenever the normalized permeate flow drops by 10%

Normalized salt passage increased by 10%

Normalized differential pressure increased by 15% from the reference condition established during the first 48 hours of operation

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Good Engineering, Operation & Monitoring procedures ensure good long-term performance of FILMTEC™

membranes.

More information available online:

http://www.abunayyantrading.comhttp://www.dow.com/liquidseps/service/lm_operation.htm

http://www.dow.com/liquidseps/service/lm_clean.htm

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Thank you

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