Heavy Industries use large amounts of cooling water in their operations.

In arid Saudi Arabia, this issue becomes even more acute given the overall lack of water. Thus, industries have, by their nature, had to be located on the coasts.

However, the sheer number of industries which were originally planned for Jubail mitigated against building the plants along the coastline. Instead, the manufacturing sites are concentrated a little inland on an industrial park which allows for better utilisation of land, utilities and feedstocks.

An extensive network of canals, pipes and pumps brings seawater to the individual industries.

The operation of Jubail's seawater cooling system is simple. Cool water is drawn into an intake structure, is filtered to remove suspended matter and chlorinated to curb marine growth, then pumped into the main distribution network, where it flows by gravity throughout the industrial area.

The industries take the cooling water they need, then return it, after use, into a channel which discharges into the Gulf. In this process, cooling water is used just once, and intake and outflow are never mixed.

The massive intake pumping station at Jubail houses 14 pumps with a combined rating of 24,500 horsepower. The pumphouse can move almost 10 million cu m per day. A new pump station will more than double the pumping capacity of the cooling system.

The gravity distribution system consists of more than 11km of open canals, 120m wide and six m deep and another 80km of underground concrete pipelines.