A desalination plant in southwest Queensland for the burgeoning coal-seam gas (CSG) industry is to be built by a consortium of GE and Laing O’Rourke for leading Australian gas explorer and producer QGC.
High salinity water is produced as part of coal seam gas extraction, which must be treated in an environmentally responsible manner.
GE announced on 15 December 2010 that the new Kenya Water Treatment Plant will use the company’s advanced membrane and thermal water treatment technologies to desalinate water produced during the extraction of gas from the coal seams. This process will produce water that is suitable for beneficial reuse in a variety of applications, such as irrigation for farmers and process water for industrial customers.
The facility, to be built near the town of Chinchilla about 290 km west of Brisbane, will have the capacity to treat up to 72,000 m³/d and is expected to begin commercial operation in the final quarter of 2011.
The new water treatment facility will feature its own power generation plant, which will be powered by coal-seam methane. The project builds on an existing relationship between GE and Laing O’Rourke; the two companies worked together on the recently completed Darling Downs Power Station, the largest combined-cycle power station in Australia.