Water. Desalination + reuse
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March 2019 Water. desalination + reuse The Quarterly 5 SAUDI ARABIA Marubeni-led group wins Shuqaiq 3 project A consortium led by Marubeni Corporation is to invest $600 million in Shuqaiq 3 desalination plant project in Saudi Arabia. The group comprising Marubeni, Abdul Latif Jameel Commercial Development Company (ALJ), Rawafi d Alhadarah Holding and Acciona Agua has signed a 25-year water purchase agreement with Saudi's Water and Electricity Company. The project is for a 450,000 m3/d reverse osmosis desalination plant at Shuqaiq on the Red Sea coast. Commercial operation of the plant is set to begin in 2021. The group of four formed a special purpose company that is 45 per cent owned by Marubeni, 30 per cent by ALJ, 15 per cent by Rawafi d, and Acciona owns 10 per cent. The project is the largest reverse osmosis plant with a Japanese backer anywhere in the world. BRAZIL ArcelorMittal to award desal project Steelmaker ArcelorMittal was poised to appoint a fi rm to build a desalination plant at its operation in Brazil as Water. desalination + reuse went to press. Firms from India, Spain and the US were in the running for the BRL 50 million ($13.2 million) contract. The new plant will be a modular reverse osmosis facility with capacity of 12,000 m3/d initially and the option to expand. It will consume electricity produced by the steel mill. The completion date is slated for 2021. The company wants to reduce its reliance on state water utility Cesan amid concerns about future water shortages. The Espirito Santo utility told ArcelorMittal to reduce consumption by 30 per cent during a water crisis in 2015. "What we are doing is insurance so that if there is another rationing event we can respond," said ArcelorMittal's president of fl at steel operations in Brazil Jorge Ribeiro. KUWAIT Kuwait Fund fi nances four desalination plants in Egypt Kuwait Fund is to loan KWD 15 million ($49 million) to the government of Egypt for construction of four desalination plants in South Sinai governorate. The total cost of the four plants is pegged at KWD 32.9 million - Kuwait Fund will extend an additional loan to complete the fi nancing. The total capacity of the four plants will be 56,000 m3/d. The project comprises a plant of 30,000 m3/d at Sharm el-Sheikh, 15,000 m3/d in Abu Redis, a 6,000 m3/d plant at Nabq, Sharm el-Sheikh, and 5,000 m3/d at Taba. The completion date is set for Q4 2022. The loan term is 25 years at an interest rate of 1.5 per cent. SAUDI ARABIA KAUST develops adsorbent hydrogel prototype King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) has developed a hydrogel that absorbs water at night-time and releases it when warmed by sunlight during the day. Associate professor of environmental science and engineering, Peng Wang, and his team at the Water Desalination and Reuse Centre, developed a prototype device using calcium chloride. The salt was incorporated into a hydrogel polymer to prevent it from liquifying when it absorbs water. The prototype uses carbon nanotubes, which effi ciently absorb sunlight and convert it into heat, enabling captured water to be released during the day. The prototype used 35 grams of the hydrogel and captured 37 grams of water during a night of 60 per cent relative humidity. The next day, a er two-and-a-half hours of natural sunlight, the water was released and collected in the device. "The hydrogel's notable aspects are its high performance and low cost. If the prototype were scaled up to produce three litres of water a day - the minimum required for an adult - the material cost of the adsorbent hydrogel would be as low as $0.5 a day," said Renyuan Li, a PhD student in Wang's team. The paper, 'Hybrid Hydrogel with High Water Vapor Harvesting Capacity for Deployable Solar-Driven Atmospheric Water Generator', was published in Environmental Science & Technology, a journal of the American Chemical Society, on 7 September 2018. 450,000 m3/d SWRO