DesalData Weekly - December 9, 2015

Posted 09 December, 2015 by Mandy

This Monday, December 14, a ceremony will celebrate the completion of California’s $1 billion (USD) Carlsbad Desalination Plant—the largest seawater desalter in the Western Hemisphere[1]. The plant will deliver potable water to customers through a ten-mile, large diameter pipeline.  According to the 30-year Water Purchase Agreement between Poseidon Water and the San Diego County Water Authority, the latter will purchase between 59,210,000 and 69,070,000 cubic metres of water per year (serving 400,000 people, or about 8 percent of the region’s water demand)[2].

[1]  [2]

Gary Arant, General Manager of the Valley Center Municipal Water District—which will purchase this desalinated water from the Water Authority—has said to local residents that this new profusion of water into the water supply will not decrease water prices, nor will it ease the mandatory, statewide restrictions on water use.  These precautions are in line with those of California’s State Water Resources Control Board, which has ordered water agencies such as the Valley Center to cut back on their water sales, even if they have access to more water.

Since opening in 2009, the desalination plant in Skikda, Algeria has reached the milestone of producing 200 million cubic metres of drinking water.[3]  Located in the country’s northeast, Skikda is a city and port on the Mediterranean Sea’s Gulf of Stora.  It is home to 250,000 people, and a concentration of natural gas, oil refining, and petrochemical industries (that were developed in the 1970s).  The daily output at the Spanish-owned Abengoa plant is 100,000 cubic metres of water, which is supplied to the city’s residents and its petrochemical complex.  Roughly 2.5 million Algerians receive desalinated water from the Skikda plant, and Abengoa’s two other (and much larger) plants in Algeria, which are located in Honaine and Ténès.

A miner at work in Peru’s Cerro Lindo   Credit: Milpo

In Peru, Veolia has won a contract to operate and maintain a desalination plant.  Compañía Minera Milpo, which is based in Peru, awarded the contract to Veolia for its Cerro Lindo Mine.[4]  The mine is located to the south of Lima, in the Ica region of the province of Chincha, 60 kilometres from the coast.  Each day, workers at Cerro Lindo produce 18,000 tonnes of lead, zinc, and copper with silver contents.[5]  Milpo states that in 2007, the mine became the first in Peru to stop using river water for operations (it sits at the edge of the Topará River ravine).  Ramón Rebuelta, Director of Veolia’s Latin American division, has said that across Latin America, the use of seawater desalination for process water is rapidly expanding, and intended to alleviate conditions in water-stressed regions.[6]

According to the contract, Veolia will use reverse osmosis to desalinate water from its intake along the Peruvian coast, before transporting it 40 kilometres to Cerro Lindo, which is located at an altitude of 1,850 metres.  Currently, the plant has an industrial process water production capacity of 48 litres of water a second; and in 2016, the output will be increased by 20 percent—to 60 liters of desalinated water a second.[7] 

In other news: Hungary will finance two projects in Egypt pertaining to housing and desalination.  The Egyptian Minister of International Cooperation, Sahar Nasr, explained after a meeting with Hungary’s ambassador to Cairo, Peter Kvech, that the Hungarian Export-Import Bank Plc. (Eximbank) will finance the projects.  Ms. Nasr and Mr. Kvech also discussed plans to increase mutual investments in their respective countries.[8]