New Desalination Technology from Saudi Arabia Opens Doors to Higher Worldwide Clean Water Sources – Announced King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology (KACST)

Worldwide first and largest seawater desalination and cooling plant has been opened in Solar Village nearby Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The state of the art system - Adsorption Desalination and Cooling (ADC) - is due to be used commercially in Saudi Arabia and other regions in the near future as the project triggers interest of governmental institutions worldwide.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The first, worldwide adsorption water desalination and cooling plant has been successfully implemented by King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology (KACST) in August 2016. The project was initiated in April 2014 through a collaboration agreement with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), TAQNIA (Saudi Investment Company) and MEDAD TECHNOLOGIES Pte. Ltd. (a Singapore start-up company exclusively holding pending patent rights for this technology). Adsorption Desalination and Cooling (ADC) is a newly invented technology, co-owned between National University of Singapore (NUS) and KAUST. It is currently one of the most promising thermal desalination and cooling technologies, capable of treating direct seawater, brine water, and other highly polluted industrial wastewater, with minimum pretreatment required,and with very low electrical consumption (below 1.2 KWh/m³) and low OPEX costs (below 0,40$/ m³).

Desalination plants operate in more than 120 countries in the world, including Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Spain, Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, Cape Verde, Portugal, Greece, Italy, India, China, Japan, and Australia.

Saudi Arabia is the first and largest market of producing desalinated water, and UAE is the second largest, providing 80% of total consumed water from seawater desalination plants.

Singapore company MEDAD (General Contractor) has joined forces with KACST and NET, a Polish company executed all engineering, manufacturing and installation works. KACST engineers and researchers participated and supported all phases from modeling, designing, manufacturing and installation, through start-up and full operation.

ADC Plant project is a unique example of new multinational IP commercialization, where the invention by Saudi University (KAUST) was next realized by KACST into a semi-industrial scale plant located in KACST Solar Village, and is currently worldwide the largest existing adsorption chiller installation, with a cooling capacity of up to 1MW, and desalinated water production up to 100m³ per day.