Joint Research
South Korea's Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction Co. announced on Oct. 26 that it held a ceremony to celebrate the start of test facilities to jointly research seawater desalination plants with the Desalination Technologies Research Institute (DTRI) under the Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) in Saudi Arabia.
The research is designed to optimize pretreatment technology in order to efficiently operate reverse osmosis (RO) seawater desalination plants in the Gulf. The Gulf is recognized to have one of the worst water quality problems in the world.
The pretreatment technology removes substances that adversely affect RO membranes, such as microorganisms, calcium and magnesium, in a bid to maintain the performance of RO filters and membranes for a long time.
Doosan and the DTRI will come up with advanced design plans by securing the best operation conditions of the pretreatment technology in the Gulf over the next 30 months.
The SWCC is the state-owned body that is the world's largest owner and operator of desalination capacity. It currently runs 28 seawater desalination plants in Saudi Arabia. Established in 1987, the DTRI carries out various studies on seawater desalination systems.