Case Studies

ACWA Power International, along with Rakaa Saudi Power and Water Co., created International Barges Co. for Water Desalination in order to meet the challenge of building a rapidly deployable and self-contained solution for water desalination. Water

The Task: To meet potable water demand anywhere in Saudi Arabia during the dry summer months.

The Solution: ACWA Power International, along with Rakaa Saudi Power and Water Co., created International Barges Co. for Water Desalination in order to meet the challenge of building a rapidly deployable and self-contained solution for water desalination. The company, also known as Bowarege, is the owner and controller of the Barge Independent Water Project.

Bowarege has developed the world’s first self-contained desalination plants mounted on barges. Each barge has the capacity to produce 25,000 cubic metres a day of desalinated potable water from primary seawater. The two barges are fully integrated and functionally independent, fitted with reverse osmosis desalination plants, on-board power generators, laboratories, control rooms and staff accommodation.

Since operations began in 2008, the barge-mounted desalination plants have provided emergency water supply to several Saudi Arabian cities. They were first moored at Shuaibah, south of Jeddah, delivering water to Makkah and Jeddah ahead of new supplies from the Shuaibah Independent Water & Power Project. They moved to Shuqaiq in the southern region in 2009 until the Shuqaiq Independent Water & Power Project came online a year later, and since 2011 they have been at their current location at the Yanbu-Madinah desalination plants complex on the Red Sea to serve the industrial city of Yanbu and the city of Madinah in the west of the country.

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