How cleantech fits into Middle East, N. Africa desal needs

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) need to add about 2.7 million cubic meters per day of desalination capacity each year to meet the region's growing demand for water, with clean technologies holding the potential to help address those requirements.

The market for desalination plants in the region is expected to attract investments to the tune of $15.5 billion between 2009 and 2013, Frost & Sullivan Senior Research Analyst Vivek Gautam told the Cleantech Group today.

Gautam, who recently produced a report on the topic, said the market brought in $3.8 billion in revenue for 2008, with nearly 19 percent of that from small capacity plants.

The report also suggests reverse osmosis technologies are likely to be a bigger part of the growing market.

Gautam said demand is being primarily driven by chronic water shortages because of persistent drought-like conditions, increasing populations, and increasing per capita water consumption because of improving living standards and expanding industrial activity. There’s little available fresh water in the region, Gautam said.

“It’s really a hot bed of activity. Since they have no natural water supply, they have to inherently have desalination capacity,” said Topsfield, Mass.-based International Desalination Association President Lisa Henthorne, who lived in Dubai for the last five years.

The growing desalination market offers immediate potential for energy recovery technologies, Gautam said.

“In the short run, we may expect some market for nuclear energy-based desalination, as it is most competitive compared to other non-conventional energy resources,” he said. “Similarly, we may expect some opportunities for solar energy-based desalination, particularly for small capacity plants using brackish water as feed.”

He cited desalination coupled with solar power as potentially being the most promising in the long term.

Desalination is considered an energy intensive process, but Gautam said few alternative reliable water supply options are available in water scarce MENA region countries.

Henthorne highlighted the potential for membrane technologies, which she said are already making great strides in MENA because they are energy efficient, and waste energy can be recovered from the process.

Gautam said nano-engineered membranes look promising.

“If these membranes are proven to be low fouling, this can represent a breakthrough in membrane design,” he said.

Henthorne said the market opportunity in MENA presents opportunities for cleantech companies, related to continuing to reduce desalination energy consumption and develop innovative new technologies that use natural sources of energy, such as direct osmosis, which uses more natural ability of the saline solution to remove salt.

Other selective approaches are focused on removing specific ions or increasing the amount of water that can go through a membrane, she said.

Gautam said some of the main suppliers of energy recovery technology include California-based Energy Recovery (Nasdaq:ERII) and Switzerland’s Calder. And Norway-based Aqualyng has proprietary energy recovery technology that’s integrated with a plant’s design. These devices have substantially reduced the energy intensity of reverse osmosis-based desalination, thereby reducing the production cost of desalinated water, Gautam said.

Earlier this month, Energy Recovery said its energy efficient technology is expected to be implemented at the Southern Seawater Desalination Plant in western Australia (see Energy Recovery tech slated for new Australian desal plant).

Henthorne said because of global warming the rain patterns have changed in Australia, leading to changes in the water and air currents.

“They have, in a matter of a few years, gone from a drought to recognizing this is not going to change,” Henthorne said.

She said environmentally friendly desalination plants have been springing up through Australia, often powered completely by renewable energy.

Other companies Gautam said are working toward coupling renewable energy with desalination include South Korea's Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction, which is pairing a desalination plant with fuel cell and wind energy.

Doosan and Korea Electric Power are working on a Multiple Effect Distillation (MED)-based desalination plant integrated with a small nuclear plant to produce 40,000 cubed meters per day of water and 90 megawatts of power, at low cost compared to gas turbines. Commercialization of this technology is in progress, Gautam said.

Last week, Canonsburg, Pa.-based Aquatech International was picked to design and build a seawater desalination project for a thermal power plant in Egypt, to include two MED units. MED technology allows for uninterrupted water supply (see Desal project at Egyptian thermal power plant goes to Aquatech).

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