Global Production On Desalinated Water

Table 1 provides figures for the global production of desalinated water, by process and plant capacity. It shows that MSF plants have a higher total production capacity than any other process, despite the larger number of reverse osmosis plants. The growth and development of MSF plants owes a tremendous debt to the seminal contributions of the late Professor R. Silver of Glasgow University, who was the foremost pioneer of industrial scale distillation units. His first large-scale MSF units, in Kuwait and in Guernsey, were both commissioned in 1960. These plants had 19 and 40 stages respectively. Table 1 shows that, of the larger desalination plants (>4000 m³ d^-1), MSF plants amount to 64 per cent of the total capacity.

Table 1. Summary of worldwide desalination capacity to 1998, split by plant type and process capacity range.

Table 2 splits the data in a different way to indicate the disproportionately large share of the world's desalination capacity which is in the Arab states, and particularly in the Arabian Gulf.

Table 2. Summary of worldwide desalination capacity, to 1998 showing contribution made by Arab nations.

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