Antone In short, it depends ...
Published by Luan Schoeman
Antone
In short, it depends on the salinity of the raw water, the efficiency of the RO plant, cost of Diesel etc. You can probably work on 4 kWh/m3 desalinated water and R3/kWh. Thus, direct energy cost is about R12/m3. All other costs (antiscalant, chlorine, smbs, GAC, ex capital amortisation) can be R7/m3. All of this based on assumed raw water quality, very high level.
We (www.alveo.co.za) build containerised RO systems with integrated Solar power supply for the African market. Maybe that is a better option than Diesel?