Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has appointed an advisor for a new desalination plant at the Jebel Ali Power and Water Station.
Under a AED 16.3mn ($4.4mn) contract, the unnamed international company will carry out the consulting work for the plant which will use energy efficient reverse osmosis technology, DEWA said in a statement.
Due to be operational by April 2020, the desalination plant will have a total capacity of 40 million gallons per day (150,000 cubic meters per day).
Of Dubais current desalination capacity of 470 million imperial gallons per day (MIGD), only 25 MIGD, or 6 percent is produced using reverse osmosis (RO) technology with the vast majority using the more energy intensive multi-stage flash (MSF) thermal desalination process.
HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA, said: In adherence with its strategy, DEWA has chosen to use reverse osmosis technology, as they use about 90% less power than MSF technology.
Al Tayer added that DEWA is working to retrofit existing plants with photovoltaic (PV) solar panels to reduce carbon emissions in the future.