The $130m facility at Al Khafji City in north eastern Saudi Arabia will desalinate 60,000 cubic metres of seawater each day.
Abengoa will build the project in partnership with Riyadh-based Advanced Water Technology, which is owned by technology development and investment firm Taqnia.
The company claims that the facility would be the first large-scale desalination plant to be powered by solar energy.
The facility features a photovoltaic plant that will deliver the required power for the desalination process, helping in the reduction of operational costs.
It will also have a system to optimize power consumption and a pre-treatment phase to reduce the high level of salinity and the oils and fats that exist in the region’s seawater.
The project increases Abengoa’s desalination capacity to around 1.5 million cubic meters a day, enough to supply about 8.5 million people globally.
In the Middle East, Abengoa is undertaking the Barka desalination plant in Oman, and has also secured a contract for the region’s largest solar plant, in Abu Dhabi.
In December 2014, Abengoa signed a memorandum of understanding with the South Korea-based Daelim Industrial for the development of large water projects globally.
