The El Prat de Llobregat desalination plant (officially ITAM Llobregat, also known as the Barcelona desalination plant) can supply 200,000 cubic meters of fresh (potable) water per day, that is, 200 million liters of water per day (technically, 60 hm3 /year of average flow of product water). The one in El Prat is the desalination plant that generates the most water in the European Union, although it must be remembered that the largest desalination plant in Spain and the whole of the EU is Torrevieja (Alicante), which has a nominal capacity of 240,000 cubic meters per day. (and an authorization for expansion up to 360,000 m3/day).
Those of El Prat and Torrevieja are left out of the list of the Top-10 desalination plants in the world and far from number 1, the Jebel Ali plant, located in Dubai (United Arab Emirates), with a capacity of 2,228 million cubic meters per day (11.14 times that of Barcelona, to be precise).
The Jebel Ali desalination plant occupies this first world position according to various sources, including Guinness World Records (rating granted in September 2022), although other sources (such as the Reuters agency) consider that the first position corresponds to the Ras plant. Al-Kahir (if only water generated by reverse osmosis is counted) and Israel attributes the leadership to the Sorek plant, considering that Jebel Ali and Ras Al-Kahir are power and water generation plants (Sorek It is the first on the list that is only desalination, by reverse osmosis).
Jebel Ali is a port city located 35 kilometers southwest of the city of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. The city gives its name to the largest desalination plant in the world, built and operating jointly with a combined cycle electricity production plant, which uses natural gas and oil as fuels.
Desalination at Jebel Ali is carried out by two systems. In one of the units of this complex, seawater passes through reverse osmosis filters (the same system as most modern desalination plants, including the one in El Prat) to generate drinking water. Most of the production of fresh water, however, is done by flash distillation, that is, heating salt water until it evaporates, and then condensing it to obtain fresh water. At the Jebel Ali plant, this multi-stage process is relatively easy because it uses waste heat from the power generation plant.
The Jebel Ali desalination and power plant complex consists of nine individual plants, built along more than three kilometers on the Saudi Arabian Gulf coast, between the Jebel Ali port and the Jumeirah district.
The Jebel Ali facilities are operated by the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa, a public company of the emirate of Dubai) and form what is considered the combined cycle power plant with the largest installed capacity in the world (in total 8.6 gigawatts). . As previously stated, it is also the seawater desalination plant with the largest production capacity in the world.
The main fuel used in the production of electricity and drinking water in Jebel Ali is natural gas or associated gas from oil production, which is partly imported from neighboring countries.
