UAE to set up world's largest solar desalination plant

The UAE would establish world's largest solar-powered desalination plant that will process more than 22 million gallons of potable water per day.
The new plant at Ras Al Khaimah emirate would also generate 20 MW of electricity. It will implement the most advanced reverse osmosis and filtration technologies and, when operational, will push unit production rates down drastically.
The plant was announced by private service utility and solutions provider Utico Middle East that aims at setting a desalination business model. Desalination is the process of removing salt and other minerals from saline water.
The project would set the new benchmark for the desalination business model and will be the world's greenest desalination plant with the least CO2 emissions, Richard Menezes, Executive Vice Chairman of Utico Middle East, said.

"The GCC has an abundance of sunshine throughout the year and our aim will be to harness this free energy and channel it to UAE residents at extremely low cost," he said.
GCC or Gulf Cooperation Council is a political and economic alliance of six Middle Eastern countries namely: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman.

"The new solar-powered desalination plant will complement the clean coal power plant project we announced last year. The two plants will together generate power and water while reducing CO2 emissions by more than 1 million tonnes CO2 per year," Menezes said.

The reverse osmosis process forces seawater through a polymer membrane using pressure to filter out salt.
The tender for the plant will be announced next month.
The project eclipses a similar project declared by Saudi Arabia recently by generating twice as much power as the Kingdom's Al Khafji plant, whose output capacity will be 10 million gallon of water per day and 10MW of power once complete.