Unlike regular plants, desalinization plants require a large amount of infrastructure, expensive technology and energy. In fact, according to the International Desalination Association, large-scale desalination plants produced about 23 billion cubic meters of water and electricity in 2012, which is enough to serve needs of over 300 million people. The total cost of constructing such facilities can exceed $10 billion or even more. Essentially, it comes down to this: expensive construction doesn’t guarantee high-quality water and vice versa – cheap construction can lead to less desirable results.
Desalination plants cost to build
Water desalination has been around for thousands of years, but it’s only recently that the technology has become economically viable. With growing populations and dwindling water resources, desalination is being used more and more often.
Desalination plants can be built on land or at sea, and they use either reverse osmosis or distillation to purify saltwater.
A number of companies build desalination plants all over the world. Siemens, GE Water & Process Technologies, WorleyParsons, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., Technip SA and Aker Solutions are just some of them.
The cost to build a water desalination plant depends on factors like location, size and type of facility. According to Water Desalination Report 2018 from GlobalData, reverse osmosis (RO) facilities usually cost between $1 million and $2 million per 1,000 m3/day capacity. However, those costs can increase significantly if you’re building in remote areas or near the coast because of higher transportation costs for materials.
Distillation facilities are slightly more expensive than RO ones because they require more energy to operate (about 20% more).
How much a desalination plant cost
A desalination plant is a facility that removes salts and other minerals from water to produce fresh water suitable for human consumption or irrigation.
Desalination plants are typically large-scale facilities that use a variety of processes such as distillation, freezing, reverse osmosis and electrodialysis to purify salt water. A few plants also use multi-stage flash distillation (MSF) technology.
The main benefit of desalination is that it allows the production of clean water in areas where there are no other sources available.
Desalination plants are expensive to build, but they can provide a reliable source of clean water at relatively low cost compared with other options such as drilling wells or transporting water from elsewhere.
The cost of building a desalination plant varies depending on the size and type of equipment being used. According to Water Technology magazine’s annual survey, the average cost per cubic meter (cubic foot) of purified seawater is about $0.5-$1.5/cubic foot ($0.2-$0.7/litre). This makes seawater desalination about twice as expensive as drinking water treatment and delivery systems for municipal supplies.