Dubai-based Metito has landed two new seawater reverse-osmosis (SWRO) desalination plants in Australia and is currently nearing completion of one in Qatar.
The Australian plants are part of a long-term partnership with Bechtel International Inc and are located on Curtis Island near Gladstone, Queensland.
Bechtel is constructing three separate liquefied natural gas plants on the island, and Metito‘s work includes design, fabrication and supervision of installation of its own equipment including SWRO desalination plants and sewage treatment plants to be used for the construction sites.
The specification required these plants to meet challenging feed water quality and very strict discharge limits. To meet the needs for the construction schedule, plant construction was fast-tracked.
The Qatar desalination plant will supply water for drinking, district cooling and irrigation with a total capacity of 35,000 m³/d at the Pearl Qatar resort. A project requirement was maintaining water salinity at less than 400 ppm and complying with local environmental standards.
Meito group business development director, Bassem Halabi, said, “The design and construction of the plant room constituted a major challenge since the only way to build it was to construct it as a multiple-storey structure.” As Halabi explained, the building was constructed in four levels with the basement standing at 9 m below seawater level and housing the pressure filter, pumps gallery and air scouring blowers.
The ground floor housed the chemical preparation and dosing systems, carbon dioxide storage and cartridge filters. The mezzanine floor housed motor control centres, and the first floor accommodated the first and second-pass RO modules, high-pressure pumps with energy recovery devices and chemical cleaning systems for the RO modules. Cooling towers were installed on the upper floor.