To meet growing demand for quality water treatment in Saudi Arabia, GE Water & Process Technologies will build a new chemical blending plant in Dammam, Saudi Arabia - bringing over 10,000 tonnes of new chemical production capabilities, a 1,150 square meter chemical and equipment storage expansion, and expedited customer response times. The Dammam facility, scheduled to commence operation in late 2007, will also include a GE water treatment laboratory and commercial office space. It will serve a variety of industry sectors, including municipal water and wastewater.
The GE unit and Al Tamimi Group also announced a partnership, “GET Water”, to bring a fleet of GE Mobile Water Treatment Systems to Saudi Arabia. The mobile fleet, which includes seawater and brackish water RO systems, ultrafiltration (UF), multi-media pretreatment, and clean-in-place (CIP) systems, will be stored by Al Tamimi in Jeddah and Dammam, ready for deployment within a few hours of a request
In Dubai, UAE, Palm Water picked GE Water for the $550 million Palm Water-Jebel Ali Free Zone (Jafza) Utility Project. GE will supply water treatment technologies that include, seawater desalination reverse osmosis (SWRO), ZeeWeed membrane bioreactor (MBR) and polishing treatment for Palm Water’s three major Jafza facilities - a seawater desalination plant with a capacity of 100,000 m3/day; a centralized wastewater treatment plant with a capacity of 108,000 m3/day; a water polishing plant with a capacity of 81,000 m3/d, and an industrial wastewater plant with a capacity of 4,000 m3/day.
GE Water also will design and build an SWRO plant, which will provide 70,000 m3/day of freshwater in South Africa. In a first there, the $220 million plant will recover ultra-pure salt from concentrated brine stream for production of chlorine, caustic soda and hydrochloric acid at the refinery. It’s part of a larger investment to build a new chlorine refinery in the Coega Industrial Zone, Port Elizabeth. This 600 tonnes-a-day refinery will be owned and operated by Strait Chemicals and meet growing global demand for chlor-alkali and its derivatives.
Lastly, an RO water reuse system from GE Water helped Loch Lomond Distillery in Alexandria, Scotland, earn the Annual Award for Excellence in Manufacturing Energy Efficiency from The Carbon Trust on due to dramatic energy savings and a 3,300-tonne reduction in carbon emissions the system allows at one of Scotland’s oldest independent distillers. The first of its kind for UK distillers, the RO system enables the distillery to recover clean, hot water from its distillation effluent that can be immediately reintroduced into the plant with heat recovery to save some £300,000 in energy costs and reduce water use by over 130,000 m3 per year.
KSB pumps aid Austrian steel mill, London’s stadium
The KSB Group, of Frankenthal, Germany, supplied one of the largest water pumps with an axially split casing ever built in March to a voestalpine Stahl GmbH steel mill in Linz, Austria. The 13-metric-ton pump with a discharge head of about 17 metres conveys cooling water through a newly built, one metre thick pipeline to the company-owned power station in the event of a malfunction, and thus plays an important part in improving reliability of supply. A building comprising the inlet tank was especially erected next to the existing pumping station to accommodate the pump and driver. In April, the pump passed its test run.
KSB’s Loughborough, UK-operation also supplied Amarex N submersible motor pumps to the train station serving the new Wembley Stadium in London. The pumps were installed as part of a package situated in the stormwater storage impermeable area beneath the station. The system was designed to prevent flooding in the station and adjacent areas during heavy rains.
MWH consults on hydropower, asset management
USA-based engineering consultant MWH was picked by the Pakistan Water & Power Development Authority (WAPDA) to provide construction management and contract administration services on the Jinnah Hydropower Project (JHPP) through a joint venture with local engineering companies. The $128 million project, which broke ground in December 2006 and is to be completed by the end of 2010, is part of a 25-year master plan to meet increasing energy demand driven by rapid economic growth in Pakistan. It’s being implemented under an EPC (engineer, procure, construct) contract awarded by WAPDA to Dongfang Electric Corp., a Chinese contractor.
Also, in May, Northern Ireland Water (NIW) announced a consortium led by MWH was chosen to implement an Asset Management Model for delivery of the Northern Ireland Asset Management Plan 3 (NIAMP3). The OneAM consortium includes MWH, United Utilities, EC Harris and ICS Consulting. OneAM will work closely with NIW on the 30-month, £2 million project to implement its model for asset management and carry out its strategic investment planning for the 2010-2015 period.
Lastly, MWH was tasked by the Awwa Research Foundation and California Energy Commission to compile international desalination research and development (R&D) efforts in a user-friendly, searchable database that updates related R&D since DESALNET (AWWA 2002). It also was picked by American Municipal Power-Ohio (AMP-Ohio) for a DBO contract on three new hydroelectric projects on the Ohio River in the USA.
Field Notes
Belgium: On May 21, the European Parliament adopted a report toughening rules on improving surface water quality and added 28 “priority hazardous substances” to the 41 pollutants proposed by the European Commission for environmental quality standards (EQS): pesticides, heavy metals and others that may endanger ecosystems, and via the food chain, human health. This is one of a number of daughter directives stemming from the 2000 Water Framework Directive. In the two previous cases - bathing water (2005) and groundwater (2006) - MEPs were obliged to go all the way to conciliation to amend the legislation. Under the directive, the EQSs are to be met by 2015 and direct discharges of pollutants into surface water must cease by 2025.
Egypt: The EU has provided €64 million in funding for the South Sinai Regional Development Programme (SSRDP). The SSRDP has committed €55.5 million of the planned funds toward strategic infrastructure and socioeconomic development projects to date. Among those are 21 contracts worth €34 million under way, including water supply for villages of St. Katherine and Wadi Feiran; wastewater system improvements for El-Tur City and Wadi El-Tur; and supply of water tankers and tanks to rural communities near El Tur and Sharm El-Sheikh. Another €21.5 million under contract are for priority development sectors in areas such as capacity building, public awareness, and environmental and sustainable development.
UK: Rentricity Inc., a U.S.-based renewable energy recovery company, and Mouchel Parkman plc, water and energy conservation business consultants, established Rentricity Ltd., a UK-based joint venture to capitalize on the clean energy potential found within untapped pressures and flows of water company piping systems.
UAE: ACWA Emirates LLC, a Mid-East unit of London’s ACWA Services, supplied six Containerized, Mobile, Sewage Treatment Plants for use at desert camps during construction of major gasification projects in Abu Dhabi. Designed and built for Consolidated Contractors Co., two were for treating raw sewage at the Ruwaise 3rd Natural Gas Liquification site and for an Onshore Gas Development project in Habshan.
Denmark: WASY GmbH, the Institute for Water Resources Planning and Systems Research in Germany, was acquired by the DHI group, strengthening its commercial software product line as well as project experience in GIS-based groundwater and surface water modeling. Its leading groundwater package FEFLOW is for fluid flow and transport of dissolved constituents and/or heat transport processes.
Jordan: U.S.-based engineering consultant Black & Veatch won two prestigious awards at the 2007 Global Water Awards ceremony held in Barcelona, Spain. It earned distinction in the Water Company of the Year category and was part of a team highly commended for the Wadi Ma’in Water Treatment Plant in Jordan as a Desalination Plant of the Year.
