On-site training programmes in desalination plants

Across the globe and since the dawn of civilization, fresh water resources have been a major economic, environmental and political issue that affect human welfare and progress. Today, the desalination industry is experiencing rapid growth across the globe; unfortunately, the industry lacks several key elements that should make this expansion more efficient, more profitable to the owner, less expensive to the consumer and with limited impact on the environment. These elements include development of codes and standards for various desalination activities and having integral training programmes for qualifying the manpower. This study focuses on evaluating the training programme adopted since 1994 in the Doha West desalination and power plant. Further development of the plant manpower is achieved through short course training on various topics related to design, operation and maintenance of desalination and power plants. Evaluation of the training programme is presented in terms of various operating parameters, which include plant availability, production efficiency, performance ratio, specific manpower and specific consumption of cleaning acid and balls. Results show drastic enhancement in plant performance, where availability increased to 80% and production efficiency is close to 100%. Also, the plant performance ratio remains at values close to clean operation for more than half of the operating time. The specific manpower shows continuous decline because of the increase in the production efficiency and elimination of unnecessary overhead costs. Operation policy focused on increasing the use of on-line ball cleaning and reducing the frequency of acid cleaning. This is advantageous, since acid cleaning promotes metal corrosion, while on-line ball cleaning has negligible effect on the integrity of the preheater tubes. © 2001, Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.