Desalination in Libya: Major Expansion under Way

Chairman of General Desalination Company (GDCOL) Abdulmonem Ali Elhassadi talks about the major desalination projects and current desalination capacity in Libya.

According to Elhassadi, “Currently, General Desalination Company of Libya have 8 plants along the coast: 5 are located in the eastern region and 3 in the western region. In the east we have a desalination plant in the city of Tobruk, the capacity of this plant is 40,000m3 of water per day. Further west between Tobruk and Derna we have a plant in Bomba, which used to have an old plant since 1978 with a capacity of around 30,000m3 per day. Then in the city of Derna, 300km east of Benghazi, we have a new plant opened in 2009 with a capacity of 40,000m3 per day. Further west there is a new plant in the city of Soussa with the same capacity as Derna, this plant is about 70km west of Derna, and they also have an older plant with a capacity of about 10,000m3 per day. The next plant along the coast is in the village of Abutaraba, which is close to the city of Marj which is one of the 4 big cities in the Green Mountains; this is a new plant with the same capacity of 40,000m3 per day. In Benghazi we don’t have a plant right now, there was one but it is out of service. In the west we have 3 plants; one in Zliten, which is an old plant with a capacity of 30,000m3. Further west we have a plant in the city of Zawiya (east of Tripoli); this is a large plant with a capacity of 80,000m3 per day. Then finally we have a plant in the city Zuwara, close to the Tunisian border, this plant also has a capacity of 80,000m3. As you can see, the capacity of the western plants is almost double that of the eastern plants due to the population density. These are our working plants in different cities across Libya.”

Regarding the expansion plans: “We would like to add a new operator to the plant in Tobruk, to increase the capacity to almost 50,000m3 and we will have another new plant in a village close to Tobruk with capacity of 40,000m3 per day. This plant will use a different technology, the 8 plants that I previously mentioned use multiple effect distillation, and most of these are overseen by a French company called Sidem. Now we are trying to introduce a new technology in Libya called reverse osmosis or RO. The plant close to Tobruk will use this technology. Regarding Bomba, the plant there is currently out of service, we will have a new plant with almost 40,000m3 of capacity, perhaps also using this RO technology. We might also have a new plant to address the water shortage problem in the region with a capacity of 5,000 m3 per day,” continues Elhassadi.

“As you know we have the longest coast on the Mediterranean. We have almost 2,000km of coastline. Therefore our strategy is to have a desalination river; if we can have a plant at almost every 50km or every 100km, then we can connect them all and we will have what we call a desalination river. I have published this idea in my papers a long time ago (before the revolution) and it is my dream that I hope will come true in the near future,” concludes Elhassadi.