The Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, Masdar, has announced that VEOLIA, through its desalination specialist SIDEM, has been selected as an industry partner to collaborate on the ambitious Renewable Energy Water Desalination programme which was launched in early 2013.

The signing of this agreement is due to take place in the coming days, according to the French company, VEOLIA.

The Renewable Energy Water Desalination programme is a pilot programme to test and develop advanced energy-efficient seawater desalination technologies suitable to be powered by renewable energy sources. The long-term goal of the programme is to implement renewable energy-powered desalination plants in the United Arab Emirates.
 As technology partners, VEOLIA and MASDAR will share the costs to build and operate a pilot plant - the first step of this partnership - that will have the same characteristics as future large scale innovative and low energy consumption desalination plants.

The 15-month operation period will be split into a performance proving period and an optimisation period during which higher performances shall be achieved for the benefit of future large scale plant improvement. The water produced by the pilot scheme shall be exportable to the drinking water network of Abu Dhabi.

 Built in Ghantoot area, the pilot programme will be capable of handling very harsh sea water conditions (salinity up to 52 g/l, temperature up to 42 C and harmful algal blooms) using technologies developed by VEOLIA, such as high performance sea water pre-treatment, combining air floatation and filtration and a new osmosis membranes feed configuration, allowing high treatment fluxes. Pairing state-of-the-art energy efficient desalination technologies with renewable energy should allow power recovery up to 98%.

This partnership will also extend to future large desalination projects in the Gulf countries.

Xavier Joseph, CEO, VEOLIA Gulf Countries, said, "As the global leader in desalination, Veolia is proud to have been chosen by MASDAR as Industry Partner for the Renewable Energy Water Desalination programme. Through co-innovation, and by working closely with MASDAR, we aim to develop the next generation of sustainable desalination technologies."

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