THE CHALLENGE

Saudi Arabia’s arid climate demands innovative water management solutions, especially for King Salman Park – the world’s largest urban park development at 16 km². The park needed to treat 10,800 m³/day of CCRO® brine with high TDS levels (approximately 36,772 mg/L) from treated sewage effiuent. Key challenges included:

• Processes variable brine solutions containing elevated mineral concentrations, in-cluding calcium (1,414 mg/L), magnesium (1,211 mg/L), and chloride (15,867

mg/L), along with significant organic content (BOD: 400 mg/L, COD: 800 mg/L)

• Maintains consistent output water quality standards suitable for park irrigation
• Achieving near-zero liquid discharge at municipal scale
• Designing a compact system compatible for underground installation

This required a solution that could handle challenging feed water while maximizing re-covery and minimizing environmental impact.

THE SOLUTION

OSMOSYS, partnering with Powerline Solutions for Wetico & Albawani Joint Venture (WBJV), is implementing an integrated water treatment system featuring three stages:

• Pre-treatment System: Removes suspended solids, colloidal particles, and organics through screening, clarification, ultrafiltration, and aqueous phase oxidation, preparing the CCRO® brine (36,772 mg/L TDS) for advanced treatment.
• SAMRO Technology: Using Salinity Adaptive Multistep Reverse Osmosis, the sys-tem concentrates the brine up to 100,000 mg/L TDS using a single stage. Intelli-gent process controls adjust to feed water variations, while energy recovery devices reduce power consumption by 35% compared to conventional 2-stage RO.
• MBC System: The Membrane Brine Concentrator further processes the SAMRO concentrate to over 200,000 mg/L TDS using specialized membranes designed for high-osmotic pressure operation. The final concentrate feeds a crystallization unit that produces solid salt by-product.

This treatment train achieves an impressive 82% water recovery rate while operating in a footprint 70% smaller than conventional systems, making it ideal for the underground installation requirements at King Salman Park.

Process Flow Diagram

Results

The King Salman Park ZLD system successfully underwent exten-sive pilot testing and demonstrated both technical and economic viability. The resulting impacts include:

• Production of of high-quality irrigation water for desert for-est creation
• Reduction of liquid discharge volume by over 82% compared to conventional systems
• Energy consumption reduction of 50% versus traditional treatment approaches
• Successful handling of challenging feed variations through adaptive control systems

Construction & Fabrication are currently undersway and com-mercial operation is scheduled to begin November 2025