Shuaibah 3 Expansion II Independent Water Project (IWP) is a 250,000m3 per day water desalination plant located in Shuaibah and is wholly owned by ACWA Power. The plant utilises sea water reverse osmosis (RO) technology, at a projected total cost of SAR 1,179 million ($ USD 314 million). This desalination plant will contribute to tackling the water security challenge in Saudi Arabia, which is currently the world’s largest producer of desalinated water.
The Saudi Water Partnership Company (SWPC), previously known as the Water and Electricity Company or WEC, is the off-taker, and will purchase all the water from the plant as part of a 25-year concession arrangement with ACWA Power. The project is structured under a Build, Own and Operate (BOO) arrangement.
The plant consists of 10 RO trains with a double pass through, with an expected 40% conversion rate from the seawater. Dual media gravity filters are implemented for the pre-treatment, and the project includes construction of the plant along with seawater intake and outfall.
The EPC contractors are Fisia Italimpianti from Italy and Abengoa from Spain.Construction commenced in May 2017 with a challenging two-year target for commercial operation and the delivery of the much-needed water for the Makkah region.
The plant successfully started producing water in April 2019, earlier than planned. This is a remarkable achievement given that a plant of this size normally takes two-and-a-half to three years to construct in the region. And this assumes everything goes right and there are no major project complications. Figure 1a shows the plant’s membrane skids, while Figure 1b shows the sea water intake.
ACWA Power and their EPC Contractors were able to successfully achieve this tight schedule in two ways. First of all, management stayed on top of the project meeting regularly to assess project progress and to overcome bottlenecks before the delivery schedule was adversely affected. The developer, EPC contractors, subcontractors and all other stakeholders such as SWPC worked closely together with the same objective of water delivery.
Secondly, the entire project team focussed on water production with secondary consideration given to balance of plant matters, while still giving high priority to achieving all health, safety and environmental requirements.In fact, the project achieved 4.5 million worker-hours without a lost time injury (LTI) and without a single environmental violation.