The MARAFIQ desalination plant in Saudi Arabia, built by SIDEM of France, uses 10,000tns of duplex stainless steel in grades SAF 2304® and 2205 from Outokumpu, out of a total quantity of 16,500tns for the plant. The Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia is seeing fast industrialization, increasing population numbers and, as a result, growing needs of freshwater. The long-term plan for this desert region includes expansion of power generation and desalination capacities. As part of the plan, Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies, through its thermal-desalination specialist SIDEM (Veolia WST-Sidem), has been chosen to design and build one of the world’s largest desalination plants for the MARAFIQ power and water utility company. The plant will provide 800,000cum of desalted water per day. SIDEM’s Multiple effect distillation technology also forms the core of the MARAFIQ plant. The process utilizes steam from the adjacent power plant to evaporate seawater at low temperatures. Featuring low energy consumption, the process addresses the normally high energy consumption of desalination. The evaporator chambers will be built using duplex stainless steel plate from Outokumpu. Duplex stainless steels have emerged as optimal materials for desalination owing to their high strength, combined with good to very high corrosion resistance depending on the grade. As a result, duplex evaporators can be built with thinner plates, requiring less material and less welding compared to other material configurations.
