A 13.3 MGD seawater RO desalination plant for Yanbu Industrial City

This paper presents the major design criteria and features for the 13.3 million gallons per day (MGD) seawater reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant that is currently under construction in Madinat Yanbu Al-Sinaiyah, Yanbu Industrial City, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The seawater RO plant is made up of six trains of about 2.2 MGD capacity each. The plant consists of five major systems: seawater supply, seawater pretreatment, high pressure pumping, RO modules, and permeate posttreatment. The paper also discusses technical issues and parameters associated with the plant design, and advances made in the seawater reverse osmosis desalination technology.