Water. desalination + reuse

PROJECTS August-September 2014 | Desalination & Water Reuse | 31 | PROJECTPROGRESS Oman dESignaTES SiTES fOR nEw dESalinaTiOn PlanTS Oman's power and water production procurer has identified new sites on the country's coast for desalination plants with a total production potential of 250 Ml/d. State-owned Oman Power and Water Procurement Company (OPWP) said it had identified dozens of sites along the Sea of Oman, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean coasts suitable for hosting independent power projects and independent water projects. The planned water production is scheduled to start in July 2018 under a 20-year water purchase agreement OPWP said. The locations form part of a coastal "land bank" for development as power and water production sites to address domestic demand growth over the next 30 years, the company said in a recent report. OPWP said it needed to designate sites before suitable locations became scarce in the face of burgeoning infrastructure and other investment along the coast. TaTa POwER PlanT inSTallS COOling waTER REuSE India's largest power company, Tata Power, has installed a reverse osmosis plant at its Power House #6 power station in Jamshedpur to recover and reuse blow-down water from cooling towers. Blow-down water is routinely shed wastewater from power station cooling towers. The water contains high levels of dissolved material. The reverse osmosis plant will enable the power station to recycle and reuse this wastewater. The Tata Power wastewater recovery plant is fully automated with a capacity of 240 m 3 /d, saving 7,200 m 3 of water a month. SanTa BaRBaRa giVES OK fOR uS$ 644,000 dESalinaTiOn STudy funding US city, Santa Barbara, has approved US$ 644,000 to fund studies needed before its dormant desalination plant can reopen. Without the plant the city faces a potential water supply crisis. The Charles E Meyer desalination facility has been on standby status since the mid-1990s and needs about US$ 30 million in upgrades before it is operational again. Running the facility will cost an estimated US$ 5 million a year but without it, the city faces a 60% drop in water supplies. Santa Barbara has already declared a Stage 2 drought, which includes water-use restrictions and drought water rates for utility customers. Desalination is written into the city's drought plan. Without it, the council has estimated that Santa Barbara will have shortages starting in 2016. The city will have adequate supplies for the next water year, which starts October 1, 2014 only if customers cut their use by 20%, according to council figures. The council's recently approved funding is to cover the costs of environmental studies required by the California Coastal Commission and other regulatory agencies before the plant can reopen. It also covers specialized legal services. Under the current schedule, the city council would consider bids next April and the plant would come online in mid-2016. The Coastal Commission is requiring a biological assessment of the ocean floor near the seawater intake for the reverse osmosis plant, according to Santa Barbara's acting water resources manager Joshua Haggmark. The study will examine impacts from reinstalling the screens and pumps for the intake facility, he said. Santa Barbara is also funding a water-quality sampling study, which is required by the California Department of Public Health. Solid waste from the plant would be dumped with the discharge from the El Estero Wastewater Treatment Plant. dOw SignS fluOR TO Build nEw Saudi dESalinaTiOn COmPOnEnT faCTORy The Dow Chemical Company has appointed Fluor Corporation to build a new factory to manufacture reverse osmosis components for desalination plants in Saudi Arabia. Fluor will build the plant at Jubail Industrial City II in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province under an engineering, procurement and construction contract. The factory will be the first reverse osmosis manufacturing plant Dow has built outside the US. It is scheduled for completion by the end of 2015. More than 100 jobs will be created at the facility which will manufacture a range of Dow reverse osmosis products including Dow's Filmtech brackish water reverse osmosis elements and seawater reverse osmosis elements. The facility will supply the Saudi market and markets in the rest of the Middle East and Africa. Dow said the tremendous water scarcity in Saudi Arabia made it the one of the largest seawater desalination markets in the world. Dow anticipates the factory will also serve other regions where water needs are critical including Eastern Europe, India, China and South East Asia. President of Dow Saudi Arabia, Zuhair Allawi, said he was confident that Fluor "will bring significant added value to the project." Dow Water and Process Solutions global business director, Snehal Desai, said "This investment complements our activities at the Dow KSA Research Center at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology where our research focuses specifically on on reverse osmosis solutions in combination with ultra-filtration pre-treatment for seawater desalination." middlE EaST PumP SalES TO TOP uS$ 2 BilliOn The Middle East will spend nearly $2.2 billion on pumps next year according to market researcher the McIlvaine Company with reverse osmosis (RO) desalination driving up spending. The researcher's latest Pumps World Market shows oil and gas as the largest market accounting for 26% of the total. Municipalities will spend US$ 303 million and US$ 242 million on water and wastewater respectively the report said. Increased use of RO over thermal desalination will boost spending as pump costs in RO are greater due to the high pressures intrinsic to the process.

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