INDIA – The prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, inaugurated the construction of a new desalination plant and mega energy park. The desalination plant will be located in the arid region bordering Pakistan and will have a production capacity of 100,000 m3/d, serving the 800,000 people living in the region. The energy park will be constructed on 72,600 hectares of land, the size of Singapore, in the district of Kutch in Gujarat and will produce 30 GW of renewable energy. (Construction Review Online)
CANADA – H2O Innovation Inc.’s business line Piedmont, has secured three large orders supplying equipment for three new large-scale desalination plants. Two of the plants will be located in the Middle East and each will have a capacity of 600,000 m3/d. The third facility will be located in Asia and will treat 135,000 m3/d of seawater. Piedmont will supply its fiber reinforced polyester (FRP) cartridge filter housings and duplex stainless couplings product lines at a cost of $3.3 million. The order for the facility in Asia also includes Piedmonts self-cleaning strainers product line. (Financial Post)
SOUTH AFRICA – The City of Cape Town temporarily closed sections of Strandfontein for safety reasons while the temporary Strandfontein desalination plant is being decommissioned. The beach was temporarily closed on December 14 and 15, while contractors worked on the seaward side to move part of the intake and brine pipelines. The pipelines sections will be temporarily stored in the ocean next to the existing intake infrastructure, until it can be removed after the festive season. (IOL)
PAKISTAN – Hubco announced it has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with DHA over the revival of DHA Cogen Limited desalination plant. The facility was set up in early 2008 by DHA and the Singapore-based Sacoden, but was shut down soon after, only to be revived again in 2009. The plant then stopped operating again and is currently in Phase VIII. The MoU is to jointly evaluate the commercial and technical feasibility of the revival of the facility and to expand capacity to 22,730 m3/d. (SAMAA)
The Dolores River in Paradox Valley, Colorado. U.S.A. Credit: USGS
U.S.A. – The federal Bureau of Reclamation is considering giving up on the Colorado River desalination project in western Montrose County’s Paradox Valley due to the bureau’s difficulty finding an acceptable means of continuing it. The agency recently released a final environmental impact statement that included analysis of three new approaches for removing salty groundwater from the valley in order to prevent it from flowing into the Dolores River and ultimately the Colorado River. One of the approaches entails building a thermal desalination plant that would crystallize and remove the salt. The bureau instead settled on a ‘no-action’ alternative that entails continuing to operate an existing deep injection well until that is no longer feasible. The Paradox program is expected to come to an end when the well can no longer be used. (The Daily Sentinel)