Energy Recovery Joins Acciona on Saudi Desalination Works

Energy Recovery Inc. (ERII), whose clean technologies help increase energy savings to the water industry, will work with Acciona SA (ANA) on a 100,000-cubic-meter seawater desalination plant being built in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia’s Marafiq Power & Water Utility Co. awarded the Alcobendas, Spain-based Acciona a contract to design, build and bring into service the reverse-osmosis plant by the end of 2014, San Leandro, California-based Energy Recovery said in a statement. No terms were given. Construction on the plant in al-Jubail on the Saudi east coast began last year, it said.

Saudi Arabia, with the Arab world’s largest economy and a population that’s quadrupled the past 40 years, is expanding water projects to provide households with potable supplies as well as industrial-scale plants including petrochemicals. As more than 50 percent of the kingdom’s water comes from desalination, this push has attracted companies such as Veolia Environnement (VIE) SA and Suez Environnement (SEV) Co.

The world’s biggest producer of desalinated water spent $1.1 billion on 128 water and sanitation works just in the capital Riyadh in 2012. The Saudi Ministry of Water and Electricity has 285 water projects listed kingdom-wide this year on its official website.