Water. desalination + reuse

BUSINESS | 10 | Desalination & Water Reuse | May-June 2014 Consolidated Water Co Ltd announced on 9 April 2014 a contract to refurbish the Lower Valley desalination plant in the Cayman Islands, which it built in 1997, and the extension of an existing contract to operate the North Sound desalination plant. Both contracts are with the Water Authority-Cayman (WAC), the water utility owned by the Cayman Islands Government, and each of the plants is located on the island of Grand Cayman, where Consolidated has its headquarters. The refurbishment of the 800,000 GPD (3,000 m 3 /d) Lower Valley plant includes complete replacement of the high-pressure pumps; the first and second pass membrane racks, including membranes, pressure vessels and piping; the energy recovery systems; the controls systems; and associated electrical power systems. The WAC will demolish the existing Lower Valley equipment to be replaced under the contract and prepare the existing plant building for installation of the new equipment. The contract requires completion of the refurbishment work within 250 days following the contract's execution date. Following the commissioning of the refurbished plant, Consolidated Water will operate the plant for a period of three months and comply with certain performance criteria before transferring the plant to the WAC. The company also announced a 12-month extension of its contract to operate the WAC's 1.6 MGD (6,050 m 3 /d) North Sound seawater desalination plant. Consolidated Water constructed and commissioned the North Sound plant in 2002 for the WAC, expanded its production capacity in 2007 to 1.6 MGD, and has satisfactorily operated the plant under contract since commissioning. The operations contract was originally scheduled to expire on 1 April 2014. The WAC has extended the contract for 12 months, with certain adjustments to the terms of the contract as agreed between the WAC and the company and approved by the Central Tenders Committee of the Cayman Islands Government. The 12-month extension period will allow the WAC sufficient time to arrange the public tender process for a new operations contract for the plant, as required under the Cayman Islands Public Management and Finance Law. Consolidated Water intends to participate in this tender process. Denmark's LiqTech International Inc has received a purchase order of around US$ 300,000 for a prototype filtration system to be used in an algae biomass project. The prototype system will be used to concentrate an algae stream as a part of the harvesting process. Preliminary tests have shown that the LiqTech SiC membranes offer a higher throughput, high algae concentration and require less energy compared to other membrane products. LiqTech says the global algae biomass market is worth between € 3.5 and 5 billion, with a high level of participation from small and medium sized enterprises. Of this total, the health-food sector accounts for € 1.5 billion and aquaculture applications account for € 0.5 billion. Finn Helmer, LiqTech CEO, remarked, "The algae market has been identified as one of our major emerging market opportunities. More efficient harvesting processes are required to reduce production cost and the use of SiC membranes will be a key element in reducing cost thereby improving profitability for the end-users." "LiqTech is currently active in this field in Australia, North America, Europe and the Middle East, working together with market leading players. We expect to see more orders for prototype systems and we are actively bidding for a few large projects," Helmer added. Consolidated awarded two Cayman desalination jobs GE to supply evaporator/ZLD tech for oilfield GE's advanced evaporator and zero liquid discharge (ZLD) technology is to be used to recycle up to 98% of produced water for six Total E&P Italia SpA oilwells in the Tempa Rossa field in the Basilicata region of southern Italy. The engineering, procurement and construction contractor, Maire Tecnimont SpA, which is overseeing the development of the project for Total E&P Italia, chose GE to provide the technology, the company announced during the IFAT Entsorga 2014 exhibition on 5 May 2014. GE will provide two identical produced water treatment units including de-oiling, forced circulation brine concentration, evaporation and crystallization for ZLD. It is a complex process in which GE's multiple-effect steam-driven units will be used for concentration and crystallization. Vapors generated during the evaporation process are condensed in GE air condensers and coolers to meet the required temperature for demineralized water production and firefighting reuse. The energy-efficient technology will treat up to 52 m 3 /h of feed water per line and will recover the produced water as distillate and solids. Completed delivery is expected by the first quarter of 2015 with installation by the third quarter of 2015. The project marks the first application of GE-produced water treatment in Europe, leveraging on GE's wide experience in produced water treatment in Canada, the United States and Australia. The City of Santa Barbara, California, has selected Carollo Engineers to complete a three-phase evaluation for the reactivation of the city's Charles Meyer seawater desalination plant. The plant was deactivated in 1992, though the city has maintained the permits needed to bring it back online when needed. Now that California is well into the third year of a severe drought, the city wants to look at what it will take to reactivate the 10,500 m 3 /d reverse-osmosis plant to provide for drought mitigation and potential long-term water supplies. Carollo to evaluate restarting Santa Barbara Algae biomass membrane order for LiqTech

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