With a daily production capacity of 320,000 cubic meters of drinking water (that is 108 million cubic meters a year), it is the world's largest desalination plant using reverse osmosis technology.
The plant, designed and built by Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies and its Israeli partners, is comprised of two parallel treatment units each of which has an annual production capacity of 54 million cubic meters (to put this figure into perspective, 108 million cubic meters is the annual water consumption of a population of 1.4 million).
The drinking water produced at the Ashkelon Plant is of extremely high quality. Gradually desalinated as it passes through 32 reverse osmosis modules, the dissolved salt concentration at the plant exit is 30 mg/l, compared with 35,000 mg/l in the raw water pumped from the sea (the maximum concentration for water for human consumption is 400 mg/l).
The water, produced at a highly competitive price (0.50 euros per cubic meter), is entirely purchased by the Israeli State. It is used to supply drinking water to southern Israel.
Worldwide, just 1% of drinking water is produced by desalination, even though almost one quarter of the world's population lives within less than 25 kilometers of the coast.
