Long-term assessment of the product water of sulaibiya wastewater treatment and reclamation plant, Kuwait

Abstract

This paper presents a long-term assessment of the quality of the final product water of Sulaibiya Wastewater and Reclamation Plant (SWTRP), which is the world’s largest reverse osmosis (RO) wastewater plant. The assessment was based on 10 years of the plant’s monthly records of the effluent quality. The results obtained indicated that the final product water had met targeted design values all the times without a single incidence of violation. However, statistical analyses have shown that some of the parameters have seasonal patterns, and most of them are characterized by high variability. Further, the distributions of the effluent data were found to be highly skewed. In general, the distributions of the effluent data were found to neither follow normal nor log normal distributions. Knowledge of effluent distribution is of fundamental importance in assessing the reliability of existing wastewater treatment plants. It is also basic for design of new plants.