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The desalination experience in Spain has been primarily initiated in the Canary Islands. A combination of scarce water sources and high water requirements to fulfill the two major industries, tourism and agricultural, has forced these islands to develop and experience with the major desalting technologies available. At the Jinamar plant, in the desalting pedigree was initiated in 1969 with the installation of 4×5,000m3/d low temperature MSF Wespoor plants (Las Palmas I), followed in 1981 by the 2×10,000 high temperature Babcock Wilcox MSF plants (Las Palmas II) and finally the installation in 1989 of 4×6,000m3/d RO plants (Las Palmas III), followed by an additional 2×6,000m3/d commissioned in 1992. In 1995 Emalsa took over the operation of Las Palmas III. A new 8,000-m3/d train has been recently installed. This paper will present the performance of the latter plant after the major overhauls carried out to improving water quality and production performance and reducing energy costing, The Las Palmas III water intake has, because of its surface nature, substantial amounts of organic matter and consequently fouling is a major problem in the operation of the plant. A brief summary of steps taken to control/reduce this fouling will also be presented.

Seawater intakes systems are the essential and integral part of a composit seawater desalination plant and it has to be designed with due care to cater to all conditions of operation and stoppage and also prevention of carry-over of materials like seaweed and sand, which may affect the operation of the plant. While considerable progress has been made in the water desalination technology not much appears to have been done to improve the intake systems. In fact each coast has its specific problem for seawater intake. In some it may be sand, in others mud, shellfish or other organisms. This paper highlights the main problem associated with the Libyan seacoast, i.e. seaweeds, its nature and presence, various designs adopted to overcome this at existing desalination plants and also the cost influence of the seawater intake system on the total project costs.