Fertilizer Production in Water-Scarce Regions: Lessons from the Gulf
Fertilizer producers in the Gulf and the wider Middle East and North Africa have to manage severe water scarcity inside their own plants. This article covers how they do it, what recent research and real projects show about the trade-offs, and which lessons carry over to anyone designing a plant where fresh water is hard to come by. For the country-by-country picture, see our Middle East fertilizer overview.
Why water and fertilizer are tied together
The Middle East and North Africa is one of the most water-stressed regions in the world, yet it hosts some of the largest export-oriented fertilizer industries, built on cheap natural gas. A 2026 study in the journal Water Resources and Industry notes that 16 of the 25 countries under “extremely high water stress” are in the region, meaning they use more than 80% of their renewable water supply. Saudi Arabia has under 100 cubic metres of renewable water per person per year, and Jordan about 61.
That creates a paradox. Fertilizer supports food self-sufficiency, but making it uses a lot of water. The study cites estimates that producing a tonne of urea can use up to 24 cubic metres of fresh water, on top of the natural gas feedstock. A plant using green hydrogen also needs ultrapure water for electrolysis.
To make this concrete, the study models a hypothetical decarbonized urea plant producing 1.27 Mt per year:
- 641.4 m³/h of potable water for the plant itself
- 213.8 m³/h of potable feed to produce the 160.35 m³/h of ultrapure water its electrolyzers need
- 855.2 m³/h in total, which the authors round up to 1,000 m³/h of potable supply
The region already has nearly half of the world’s desalination capacity, so desalination is the obvious source. The real question is how to design the plant and its water supply together.
Lesson 1: build the water supply into the site
Established Gulf sites treat water as a utility designed alongside the process units, not an input sourced afterwards. Three existing sites in Saudi Arabia and the UAE show different ways of doing it:
| Site | Water source | Model |
|---|---|---|
| Ma'aden, Ras Al-Khair (Saudi Arabia) | Process water from one of the world's largest desalination plants, with a natural engineered wastewater treatment (NEWT) system | Industrial city with shared desalination; treated water is reused in manufacturing and for irrigation on site |
| Ma'aden, Wa'ad Al Shamal (Saudi Arabia, inland north) | Raw water treated by ultrafiltration and double-pass reverse osmosis | On-site treatment package producing demineralised water for the fertilizer plant and boilers |
| Fertil, Ruwais (UAE) | Seawater, desalinated water and power from an ADNOC utilities plant | Shared utility provider serving the industrial zone |
Inland sites such as Wa’ad Al Shamal show that the same approach works without a seawater supply, as long as treatment packages are sized to the plant’s demineralised-water demand.
Lesson 2: treat brine as a resource, but check the economics
Recovering more water and minerals from brine does not automatically make a project more attractive. Desalination produces over 142 million cubic metres of brine a day worldwide, and disposal can account for roughly 5–33% of total desalination costs. One response is minimum liquid discharge (MLD), where brine is concentrated further and minerals such as magnesium hydroxide and sodium chloride are recovered and sold.
The 2026 study tested this for its hypothetical urea plant, using a site on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast. It compared a conventional seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) setup, a base MLD setup, and a maximized MLD setup that recycles the magnesium crystallizer effluent.
| Conventional SWRO | Base MLD | Maximized MLD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total water recovery | 60.4% | 71.4% | 96.7% |
| Brine discharge vs conventional | Baseline | 22.7% lower | 88% lower |
| Energy per m³ of water | 3.8 kWh | 12.0 kWh | 12.2 kWh |
| Net present value | USD 72.1 million | USD 137.7 million | USD 75.0 million |
| Internal rate of return | About 24% | About 14.5% (incremental) | About 9.7% (incremental) |
Three points stand out:
- The maximized setup cut brine discharge the most but used about three times the energy of the conventional one, and its return was only slightly above the assumed 8.75% discount rate.
- It would match the base MLD case only if brine disposal cost about USD 1.57 per m³, or if financing costs fell from 8.75% to 6.89%. Typical surface discharge costs are USD 0.05–0.30 per m³.
- The best choice therefore depends on discharge rules and the cost of capital as much as on engineering.
This is a modelled case, not a Gulf project, so the numbers illustrate the trade-offs rather than predict a specific plant.
The same thinking applies to process effluent. In laboratory work using real wastewater from a phosphate fertilizer plant in Jordan, two-step neutralization with sodium hydroxide cut fluoride by about 94% and removed nearly all water hardness. Reverse osmosis could then recover roughly half the volume as treated water, with the potential to recycle the brine into production.
Lesson 3: demand is moving toward water-efficient products
Water scarcity is changing what gets sold, not only how it is made. In Saudi Arabia, greenhouse vegetable area reached about 7,800 hectares in 2024, up from about 5,900 hectares in 2020, according to the national statistics authority. These farms depend on water-soluble and liquid grades that deliver precise nutrient ratios through irrigation systems. In the UAE, fertigation and hydroponics favour water-soluble nitrogen formulations, and Abu Dhabi now aims to raise food self-sufficiency from 30% to 70% by 2040. In Jordan, more than half of farm water is expected to come from treated wastewater once the Aqaba–Amman desalination project is complete.
The Saudi government is also promoting slow-release products and bio-fertilizers, and date palms account for the largest share of controlled-release fertilizer use in one market study.
There is a possible link back to Lesson 2. UAE research groups and pilots are working on recovering salts and minerals from desalination brine, and seawater brine contains potassium that can in principle become potassium chloride or potassium sulfate. So far, these projects produce salts, bicarbonate or irrigation water rather than finished fertilizer, so brine-derived fertilizer remains an early-stage idea.
The practical result is a split product mix. Water-soluble and controlled-release grades serve greenhouses and date palms, while granular NPK, DAP and urea continue to serve field crops such as wheat in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The two call for different production routes.
Lesson 4: water is not the only dependency to design for
The 2026 disruption in the Strait of Hormuz showed that export routes can fail just as water supply can. As of mid-October 2026, fertilizer shipments through the strait remained close to zero, with some cargo rerouted via the Red Sea or overland. Producers with a second route had more options, such as Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast or Jordan’s Aqaba port. Water and logistics are both infrastructure dependencies that can be planned for from the start of a project.
What this means for granulation, drying and blending lines
Granulation and drying are not where most of a fertilizer complex’s water goes, but they are where dry-side choices meet the site’s water and energy limits. The table shows in general terms where water exposure sits and where equipment decisions matter. Actual values depend on each plant’s design basis.
| Process area | Typical water exposure | Design levers | Relevance of granulation, drying and blending equipment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ammonia and urea synthesis, utilities | A large share of a nitrogen complex's water, through boiler feed water and cooling | Desalinated supply, efficient cooling, shared utilities | Not directly relevant |
| Wet-process phosphoric acid and DAP slurry | Acidic effluent and scrubber water | Effluent treatment and reuse, as in the Jordanian research | Indirect; granulation follows this step |
| Granulation (NPK and DAP) | Moderate to low; water or steam in the liquid phase, plus scrubber water | Controlling the liquid phase and recycle; recirculating scrubber water | Directly relevant |
| Drying and cooling | Low water use, but high energy use and exhaust-gas handling | Dust collection and scrubbing; sizing the dryer to the moisture load | Directly relevant |
| Water-soluble and specialty crystallization | A different process route | Brine and mother-liquor management | Limited; outside typical drum-granulation scope |
For granular products in a hot, dry, dusty location, the design questions are specific:
- How much water or steam the granulation step needs, and how that interacts with recycle handling. Recycle ratio and circulating load depend on the formula and screening performance, so they come from the plant’s design basis.
- How large the dryer must be for the moisture load.
- How the cooler copes with high ambient temperatures.
- How dust is captured without adding avoidable water demand.
These are the areas Ceylan Machine & Process works in: rotary drum and pan granulation, rotary drum dryers, coolers, screening and size reduction, and dosing and blending systems for NPK lines. They are not the main lever on a plant’s water footprint. They are where a plant’s choices, matched to the site’s constraints, decide whether the product meets specification without avoidable rework.
Our market pages show how these questions apply in each country: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iraq and Jordan, with an overview on our Middle East page.
