The Al Taweelah water desalination plant was situated in Taweelah complex, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The plant was roughly eighty kilometres on the North-Eastern side of the city of Abu Dhabi. It was an Abu Dhabi Water Electricity and Authority (ADWEA) program and part of the three power and water generation firms that ran on the Taweelah location. The plant was one of the world’s leading desalination plants with a capacity to produce 3,000 megawatts of electric power and 1.3 million m3/d of water (IDA, 2006-2007).
The three firms on the site were the Al Taweelah Power Company (ATPC) that ran the B and B2 plants, the Gulf Total Tractebel Power Company (GTTPC) that ran A1’s phase 1 and phase 2 plants and the Emirates CMS Power Company (ECPC), which ran the Taweelah A2 plant. All three companies sold their yield and capacity to Abu Dhabi water and Electricity Company (ADWEC) (United Arab Emirates, n.d.).
Taweelah B and B2 plants yielded a total capacity of 1,075 megawatts of power and 431,492 m3/d of water and were build and authorized to operate in two stages. Plant B, which was the initial phase, utilized the cogeneration model and was allowed to operate between the years 1995 and 1997 (IDA, 2006-2007). It comprised six duplicate sections. Each section had a boiler that used steam, a steam turbine that was energized by natural gas with steam removal to a desalination element of the multi-flash variety (Silbermann & Koerdt, 2009). The instrumentation and monitoring system used a single button to manage the entire system and permitted the automated activation of the turbines, boilers, desalination system as well as the supporting systems (Al Taweelah –B Steam Power Plant – UAE, n.d.). Plant B2, on the other hand, used the combined cycle model and was commissioned between the years 1999 and 2001. The plant had a pair of gas turbines that had the capacity to function in the simple or combined cycle modes. Each of the turbines drained into a heat recovery steam generator, which produced steam that propelled another ‘back pressure turbine generator’ that also used steam. The second generator delivered steam to “three multi-stage-flash seawater desalination distillers” (IDA, 2006-2007, p. 19).
The Taweelah A2 plant had a space of 710 megawatts of power and 227,100 m3/d for water and utilized the combined cycle model (Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Company, 2012). The cost of producing water at the plant was estimated at around $0.84 per cubic meter.
The Taweelah A1 plant, on the other hand, had a capacity of 1,350 megawatts for electricity and 381,530 m3/d for water after being upgraded from a previous capacity of 255 megawatts of power and 132,626 m3/d of water in the year 2000. The plant consisted of four (MSF) multi-stage flash desalination elements as well as fourteen multi-effect distillation (MED) units with potential of 17,138 m3 daily (Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Company, 2012). These MED components were made of stainless steel and functioned at a maximum temperature of 63 oC and yielded a gain output ratio of 8.0. In addition, it was estimated that they were 7.5 percent cheaper to maintain than equivalent MSF plants. The documented cost of producing water at the plant in its first year of operation was found to be approximately $0.7 per cubic meter.
Technology Employed
The technologies used at the three plants were the multi-stage flash (MSF) and the multi-effect distillation (MED), which were both part of thermal technologies of water desalination. Taweelah B1, B2, A1-phase 1, and A2 employed the MSF technique, whereas Taweelah A1-phase 1 used the MED technique. It was expected that reverse osmosis would be incorporated into the company by the year 2010. However, the status of that scheme still remained uncertain.
References
Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Company. (2012). Web.
Al Taweelah –B Steam Power Plant – UAE. (n.d.). Web.
IDA. (2006-2007). International Desalination Association Yearbook. Web.
Silbermann, G. & Koerdt, R. (2009). Al Taweelah B power station – electricity and water for Abu Dhabi. (1999). Web.
United Arab Emirates. (n.d.). Web.