Water. desalination + reuse

PROJECTS | 24 | Desalination & Water Reuse | November-December 2014 PROJECTPROGRESS NEw RulES COuld REiN iN CalifORNia COaST dESaliNaTiON Proposed new regulations in California, USA could put a rein on planned desalination plants in the state including the giant, part-completed Carlsbad facility according to a water industry chief in the region. The State Water Resources Control Board is developing rules to protect marine life from the risks of harmful effects posed by desalination facilities along the California coast. More than a dozen desalination plants are proposed there including the two- thirds finished Carlsbad. Director of water resources for the San Diego County Water Authority, Ken Weinberg, said: "The proposed standards will go far in determining the state's water future, and the fate of the emerging desalination industry. The importance of these regulations to the entire state can't be overstated." He added: "The outcome of the state water board process will define whether seawater desalination can be a substantive part of California's water supply, especially in urban areas along the coast." Claire Waggoner of the state water board said much of the regulatory framework will include some latitude. On water intake systems Waggoner said that while the state viewed sub-surface intake as the least harmful, it would permit an open-sea intake system with additional protections where a sub-surface system was infeasible due to geologic conditions. The standards would affect all new or expanded desalination plants in California and could be adopted by the regulatory agency as early as this autumn. The $1 billion Carlsbad Desalination project, was approved several years ago but permit renewal and planned upgrades would trigger its need to show compliance with the proposed new rules. It would join ten existing but much smaller desalination facilities in the state, some of which operate only intermittently. Meanwhile, other proposals call for 15 new plants at sites up and down the California coast. Senior vice president with Carlsbad builder, Poseidon Water, Peter MacLaggan, said Poseidon was largely "comfortable" with the water board proposals. He said the rules were "patterned off a process we went through with the regional board." However, MacLaggan said the company had not yet determined how much compliance with the new rules might cost Poseidon. The water boards said the purpose of the rules was to minimize the loss of sea life when the plants suck in ocean water for treatment. The plants pull in and kill plankton, fish eggs and larvae. The rules would also cover the impacts on sealife of rejected, high-salinity brine which was returned to the sea. Carol Reeb of the Hopkins Marine Research Station at Stanford University said rejected brine sinks to the seafloor where it can "cut off oxygen like a layer of plastic wrap." Reeb said even a small increase in salinity could harm marine life. She said desalination plants should consider operating "brine free" by collecting the byproduct of desalination and keeping it out of the ocean. iNdiaN STEEl PlaNT dESaliNaTiON PROJECT dRawS 30 bidS A 50 Ml/d desalination project proposed by Indian steel producer, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam (RIN), has drawn bids to build the plant from 30 contractors including Indian and international players according to RIN. The steel firm has sought interest in the engineering, procurement and construction project at its Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, where it is more than doubling production to 6.3 million tonnes a year in a Rs12,500 crore (US$ 2 billion) expansion. The company has struggled with water supply problems. According to a RIN official: "Due to poor supply of water, some of the critical operations were throttled and production got affected." RIN currently runs the existing plant on a water supply of about 125 Ml/d taken under licence from the Yeleru reservoir. It recently told the government that it needed immediately 175 Ml/d for safe operations and once it had completed its expansion its water demand would be 225 Ml/d. The proposed desalination facility would be the first one set up by an industry in Andhra Pradesh state. POliTiCiaNS Call fOR PuSh ahEad wiTh STallEd SPaNiSh dESaliNaTiON Opposition politicians in Alicante, Spain have called on the country´s central government to implement the completion of two long-delayed reverse osmosis desalination plants. Advocates of the plants see them as vital to alleviate urgent problems in the province amid a current drought. Provincial deputy secretary of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español) Herick Campos, said the "paralysis" of the construction of the 240,000 m³/d Torrevieja facility and a 50,000 m³/d plant at Mutxamel was unacceptable. He said the delay in commissioning the desalination plants by the government had left the province facing a particularly difficult time with local agriculture badly hit unless urgent action was taken. Output from the € 300 million (US$ 438 million) plant at Torrevieja on Spain's arid south-east coast was expected to be split equally between supplying irrigation in Murcia and drinking water to municipalities in Murcia and Alicante. Spanish desalination company Acciona won the construction contract and a 15-year operation and maintenance contract totalling € 297 million (US$ 435 million). According to Campos the immediate implementation of the plants would avoid depleting already limited underground reserves or rationing water for other industries, and restrictions on consumption. Earlier this year, the Constitutional Court annulled an agreement set out in March 2007 that ordered a halt on construction to finish the desalination plant in Torrevieja. The plant was set to be a flagship project, becoming the largest such facility in the whole of Europe and the second largest in the world. But the project was fraught with political debate, claims of over-budgeting, and waste and environmental concerns.

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