GDCOL plans to increase Libya’s desalination capacity by building more desalination plants

Abdulmonem Ali Elhassadi, Chairman of General Desalination Company of Libya (GDCOL)

I have a quotation here that states that GDCOL is upgrading its capacity from 13,000 to 20,000 megawatts by 2020. There are not a lot of statistics about Libya, so can you tell us your opinion regarding the current demand for water in Libya and also the future projections for this demand?

The statistic you mentioned in your question is regarding electricity. First of all, I shall start by giving you some information about our company. Our company is called General Desalination Company of Libya; currently we 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 our plans for expansion, 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.

The region from the city of Derna to the border with Egypt is facing a water shortage problem and so we want to resolve this issue as soon as we can. These plans are urgent so you can see that we have short term plans and also long term plans.

We are thinking about doubling the capacity of the Derna plant, and either continuing with the same technology or with the RO technology. Nowadays all the big plants in the world are using RO technology. We are considering the same action with Soussa and Abutaraba. We are hoping to have a big plant for the city of Benghazi. This will be a natural event on the Great Man-Made River (GMMR); a multi-purpose way of thinking in terms of resolving the water shortage problem. This plant will have a capacity of 400,000m3 per day. In Tripoli we will implement a bigger plant in the near future. We hope that these plants will be implemented by the year 2020. This plant in Tripoli will have a capacity of 500,000m3 per day. Also we are encouraging all municipalities to present their needs to us so that we can help them to build new plants in their regions.

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.

In terms of the demand for water, is there a crisis of water security now in Libya?

As you know Libya is one of the poorest countries in water resources, this is a fact we cannot deny. We are rich in oil but we are poor in water. Therefore we are trying to invest in this sector, we have the money and so we are now trying to prepare our human resources and technologies to provide drinking water. In the future we also want to provide water for agriculture and industry. As you know Libya has a green coast almost 20km west from the sea; if we don’t protect and preserve this area, it shall be taken over by the dessert. We need water to preserve this greenery. Firstly, we need to provide water for drinking purposes to tackle the water shortage problem, and then we can look to providing water for agriculture and industry.

Desalinated water is the only renewable resource in the country. We have the Great Man-Made River but the ground water it provides is not renewable. As time goes by we are looking towards desalination as the main solution to our water shortage problem.

Do you know the current demand for water?

Currently the capacity that I mentioned provides almost 400,000m3 per day but the demand is not being met. If you use the world standard of 300 litres per day per person, we have a population of 7 million so you can easily calculate the demand. Some regions that I mentioned in the east for example are looking for any water source, even brackish or sea water to solve their demands for washing etc. The demand increases as population increases. Now we are satisfying this demand by utilising the GMMR and the affinities that belong to our Ministry; our desalination company and the water company that provides ground water from each location, while the GMMR brings water from the southern regions. We are almost on the cusp of providing the drinking capacity for the population of Libya, but we are falling behind day by day and if you think of the agriculture and industry sector, then of course we have to increase our supply for these.

What is the percentage of water supplied by the GMMR and by GDCOL?

We currently provide less than 20% as the main resource in the country is the GMMR. The reason for this is that in the past we used to only concentrate on the Man-Made River. Desalination was not given the chance to play an important role, but we hope this will change in the future, so that we will concentrate on desalination rather than ground water.

What would you say is the amount of investment that you are going to spend in the next 5 years? How much investment is needed to upgrade the capacity?

This is easily calculated, if we say that 1m3 of water will cost US $1,000, you multiply this by the capacity and the expansion we need, and you can see that the result is a huge number. To give you an example, the plant in the village close to Tobruk with 40,000m3 capacity using RO technology will cost more than US $100 million. We are going to spend a great amount of money in this sector. We hope that it will be for the benefit of the people, to provide good drinking water and to preserve our green areas.

Now in this post-Gaddafi era, what is the greatest challenge that you are facing?

The major challenge is to rebuild Libya in the correct way; in a good way with good institutions and corporations, giving justice to the people etc. If we succeed in rebuilding Libya in the right way as others have done, it will be a great dream that we will accomplish.

 And in terms of your operations, what are the practical challenges that you are facing?

In our industry, one of our main objectives is to train the workforce. Human resources are our challenge. We have deficiencies in this area, we would like to educate and train the workforce so that they can operate these plants correctly. It is a priority of ours to develop the human resources for each of the projects that we have in our plans. We also want to have competitive technologies and to develop our company correctly. We are competing with the Man-Made River in terms of the cost of a cubic meter of water; we need to have the cost of water from desalination to be the same or less than water from the Man-Made River. This won’t be easy because desalination is more expensive than ground water but if we are able to bring the price down this would be a great success for our company.

At the current time what is the cubic meter price for water from desalination?

You see it depends; it is different from plant to plant. We are selling the water at 86 piaster per cubic meter to the water company. You can take this as an average, in some plants it costs more because of the costs of energy but in other plants it costs less. We are also thinking of utilising national gas to be the fuel for these plants. We do run some plants on national gas and these plants have the lowest price per cubic meter of water.

What is the price of water coming from the Man-Made River?

It all depends on how you calculate these costs and on other studies. They used to have very low prices, but these prices were not correct. I was on one of the committees before the revolution. If it was to be calculated properly it would be close to 0.5 LYD, 50 piasters. Worldwide the price of desalinated water is being lowered a lot due to increased research. The price gap is being narrowed day by day.

There are some exciting new technologies with graphene membranes.

Yes, graphene membranes. I am a specialist in membrane technology so I have been following the developments.

In terms of technology companies, this is a great opportunity for foreign companies to partake in the development and to help you with these projects. What kind of technology are you going to need and will be tendering and what kind of process is this going to require?

We are opening the door to all companies from all countries. It is now a very competitive world. I have met people from South Korea, Germany, Britain, France etc. and also some local companies. Our tenders will be open to all of them to compete. The challenge is who will provide us with the best price and quality and also the best training for the workforce. Whoever can provide us with a comprehensive offer is our friend and will have the tender.

When are you planning on launching new tenders, what is the road map?

As we are expanding and developing, we are opening them day by day and some of the companies are following us in this regard. I have been invited to Turkey and Britain where many companies are interested to participate in our tenders. We have to finish the preliminary studies and send them off to the Ministry, they present them to the Prime Minister and when we have approval we will begin with announcements and tendering.

One of the challenges you may face is that government in place in Libya is interim for the moment and it is a subject to change in 2 years. Does this cause any kind of slowing down of these processes and investment?

Yes of course, they are doing their best, but they have so many challenges. This of course causes us some delays, especially in terms of the urgent problems of water shortages but everyone is doing their best. When problems arise from the people this is when we are unable to do anything, this is when we go to the municipalities and tell the people to calm down and help us to provide them with these projects and these investments. If the people cause any delays, it will be bad for them and bad for us. We try to be successful as a company and we hope that Libyans will help us in this respect. The company will fulfil its duties, the Ministry is committed and is helping us, everyone including the Prime Minister and the lawyers in the company are all helping us.

What is the annual growth in demand for water for the population, agriculture and industry?

I can give you an example regarding the Man-Made River; they provide 70% of the water for agricultural projects, 3% is for industry and the rest is for drinking water. We need to emphasise our priorities, we cannot have water for agriculture and industry and not enough for drinking water. So our priority as a company is drinking water. Even though our water is more costly, it is more pure. Sometimes with the desalination process the water is used for industry as it is not processed for drinking purposes. We have to use some chemicals to make it drinkable. Our priority is to provide drinking water for our population; our dream is to provide water for agriculture as well to stop the desertification which is a serious problem.

As for the demand for water in Libya, it is growing annually. The population growth is about 2% so perhaps drinking water growth will reach about 5%.