Dubai's giant desalination plant

Jebel Ali plant has the ability to convert sea water into clean water to meet the needs of the people of Dubai.

Dubai is one of the fastest growing cities in the world, and it has a very dry climate, according to Popular Science. The population explosion in Dubai has been gradually depleting groundwater resources, which now only provide 0.5% of the city's needs.

To produce clean water to meet the remaining 99.5% of demand (about 1.6 billion liters of clean water), the city government built Jebel Ali, a seawater desalination plant located in the middle of the Persian Gulf. and Arabian desert, capable of handling 10.6 billion liters of seawater per day.

Jebel Ali factory applies reverse osmosis technology, pumping seawater through filters to desalinate. This membrane system produces about 11.3 million liters of water / day.

The rest of the seawater (about 98.5%) goes through heating and cooling called rapid distillation. The turbines transport steam in the duct to a series of steam chambers and condense into clean water.

The Dubai Water and Energy Agency (DEWA) tests the pH, turbidity, and chlorine dioxide of the water created before shipping it to reservoirs and 666,430 customers in the city.

Only about 9% of the seawater input will become drinking water. The remaining seawater of higher salinity is pumped back to the Persian Gulf. Workers at the Jebel Ali factory regularly check the acidity of the water and the status of marine species, to make sure the warm saline emitted from the factory is not harmful to the ecosystem.