SAUDI ARABIA – Energy Recovery, Inc has announced total awards of $6.2 to supply its PX-Q300 pressure exchangers technology for desalination projects in Saudi Arabia.^[1]  The components will be used in multiple facilities with a combined output capacity of 305,000 cubic metres of water per day.  According to Energy Recovery’s estimates, these PX devices will save 291 Gigawatts of energy per year and will reduce the desalination plant’s carbon emissions by 174,000 tons annually.  The PX pressure exchanger devices are expected to be shipped in the first half of 2018.

Energy Recovery previously announced awards of $2.9 million to supply pressure exchangers to the Asia Pacific market, corresponding to a capacity of 170,000 cubic metres per day.

CANADA – British Columbia’s Saltworks Technologies has announced that its zero liquid discharge (ZLD) pilot programme at a U.S. chemical plant has successfully treated saline wastewater to 99.9% recovery. The trial came about after the chemical facility requested Saltworks to rapidly deliver a pilot program that would remove salt from their effluent, helping to meet a discharge cap on total dissolved solids.^[2]

The pilot relies on electrodialysis reversal (EDR) technology, as the high organic content and biological growth potential of the feedwater made the risk of membrane fouling and cost of pretreatment too high for reverse osmosis (RO) to be a viable option.^[3]

Saltworks utilized its Flex EDR technology to successfully extract 89% of the salt load—surpassing the 75% project goal. As a result, Saltworks successfully de-risked the chemical plant’s water balance and permit obligations. Downstream of Flex EDR, the company treated the concentrated brine with its SaltMaker Evaporator Crystallizer to achieve 99.9% net water recovery.

^{Dr. Keith Du Plessis – CDC Manager: Project Development at the site identified for the Coega Aquaculture Development Zone and Desalination Plant. Credit: rnews.co.za.}

SOUTH AFRICA – The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for a land-based Aquaculture Development Zone and desalination plant in Zone 10 of the Coega Special Economic Zone, proposed by the Coega Development Corporation (CDC), has been approved.^[4]

The approval of the EIA authorizes the CDC to construct desalination facilities with a maximum capacity of 60,000 cubic meters of water per day, which is almost a quarter of the water consumption needs of the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality, where dam levels have reached an all-time low of 24%.