SOUTH AFRICA –  A subsidiary of the PSG Group, Energy Partners, is investing in the desalination company GrahamTek with aspirations to turn the company into a multibillion-rand business.^[1]  Although PSG typically makes smaller initial investments in new businesses—it has already secured a 50 percent share in GrahamTek.^[2]

GrahamTek produces mobile plants that generate 3,000 cubic metres of fresh water per day. Each plant costs $3 million rand (roughly USD$210,900 dollars) and has a life-expectancy of about 25 years.^[3]

The company has submitted four tenders for new desalination plants to the City of Cape Town and is reportedly close to closing a lucrative deal in Saudi Arabia.

ITALY’s Italmatch Chemicals has acquired a leading Brazilian distributor of specialty chemical products, Sudamfos Do Brasil.^[4]  The new venture, entitled Italmatch Do Basail Partipicoes, will play a part in Italmatch’s vision for international expansion. It represents the company’s entry into the Latin American market and follows its acquisition of the U.S.-based company Compass Chemical International.^[5]

SAUDI ARABIA’s Water and Electricity Company (WEC) has expressed interest in two new mega-seawater desalination projects located on the country’s Red Sea Coast.^[6]   The Yanbu Phase 4 IWP facility will be located near Yanbu, 220-kilometres west of Medina, where it will produce 450,000 cubic metres per day. WEC may link this facility to existing desalination plants in Yanbu which are owned by the Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC).

WEC is also interested in the Shuqaiq Phase 3 IWP facility, which will produce 380,000 cubic metres per day.^[7]  This plant will be located in the city of Shuqaiq, nearly 140 kilometres north of Jazan.  WEC may link this plant with the acquisition of Shuqaiq Phase 1, a SWCC water and power plant with a capacity of 108 MW and 97,000 cubic metres per day of multi-stage flash distillation desalination.

WEC will conduct separate processes for each plant’s selection of companies to finance, engineer, construct, and operate the projects.^[8]

^{Credit: Desalination.biz}

U.K. – Scientists at Manchester University’s National Graphene Institute have assembled new materials that may significantly advance existing desalination techniques.^[9]  The researchers manufactured materials made of graphene, hexagonal boron nitride, and molybdenum disulphide which they perforated with slit devices that are several angstroms in diameter (at 0.1nm).  They then studied the movements of individual ions passing through the sub-nanometre slits.

Their findings, published in the journal Science, may help lead to the development of high-flux water desalination membranes. The research team included Sir Andre Geim, one of the university’s physicists who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2010 for groundbreaking work on graphene.^[10]

^{Sir Andre Geim    Credit: Desalination.biz}

U.S.A. –  Last week at a summit in Corpus Christi, Texas, local and state officials discussed plans for developing a desalination plant in the state’s Coastal Bend region.^[11] Representative Todd Hunter, who organized the event, believes that recent droughts and a devastating hurricane have deepened public awareness of water security issues in the state.   

The construction of a facility in the region—which runs along the Gulf of Mexico—hinges on funding from the state legislature.^[12]