Economics of seawater RO desalination in the Red Sea region, Egypt. Part 1. A case study

Tackling water shortage issues with desalting of seawater and salty water is common in the desert nations of the Middle East and the Mediterranean. The fast growing development in Egypt has required big movements of investments and people from the Nile Valley towards the east, with the fantastic Red Sea and Sinai coastal zones, and also towards the Western Desert that has promising brackish groundwater potentialities. In both cases, fresh water supply is essential and desalination is a feasible option that can cover the wide gap between the available capacities and the accelerating demands. The cost of desalination, either thermal or membrane, is inversely proportional to the production capacity. This greatly affects the economics of desalination at the modern tourism development area on the Red Sea. The sporadic nature of the tourist hotels and resorts along more than 1500 km of coastal strip, at Sinai and the Red Sea region, favores the small capacity reverse osmosis plants with the range between 200 and 3000 m(3)/d. The higher RO plant capacities (>3000 m(3)/d) are fewer and limited to the main towns. The present work outlined the economic variables and limitations that influence the pure water cost by using the small capacity SWRO desalination plants. The techno-economic study was made to estimate the actual cost of production on real field measurements. The fixed and operating costs of five selected SWRO plants of 250, 500, 2000, 3500 and 4800 m(3)/ d were evaluated and discussed. It was found that the production cost resulted from small SATRO desalination plants is much higher than the world cost. The study indicated that the economic larger SWRO desalination capacity (>20,000 m(3)/d) should be considered during the development strategy and planning of the new tourist projects. The related recommendations to the technical, operational and environmental considerations are given in detail.