A new desalination plant with a daily capacity of 136,000 cu m of water was officially inaugurated in Kuwait yesterday (January 27).

Veolia, a global leader in optimised resource management, was selected to build the Az Zour South desalination plant in 2011 through an international tender organised by the Ministry of Electricity and Water. The technology to be used was reverse osmosis membrane.

This plant is operating since July 2014 and reinforces the total daily capacity of water treatment at the Az Zour site by 25 per cent, up to 659,700 cu m.

This project located 100 km south of the Kuwaiti capital had been won in partnership with Al Ghanim International under a DBO (design, build, operate) scheme. The plant will be operated and maintained by Veolia for duration of five years up to 2019.

The technical originality of the project lies in the configuration of its water intake. Veolia implemented a pumping system on the discharge canal coming from the cooling system of the adjacent power station. The properties of water taken differ from those of raw seawater, to the extent that the same will be chlorinated and its temperature will be above usual standards. It results in capital expenditure and energy savings during the whole life cycle of the plant, a statement said.

“This new desalination plant reflects our global expertise in the desalination sector,” said Antoine Frérot, chairman and CEO of Veolia.

“It demonstrates that the innovative solutions, with high added value, that we offer in the area of water services, as in sanitation, waste management and energy, enable us to meet the most varied technological challenges (and particularly that of the scarcity of water resources) and to satisfy the highest requirements of the public authorities and the constantly evolving needs of cities,” he added.

The desalination plant was inaugurated in the presence of Abdulaziz Abdullatif Al-Ibrahim, Minister of Public Works and Minister of Electricity and Water in Kuwait, Laurent Fabius, French Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development; Christian Nakhlé, French Ambassador to Kuwait and Frérot. – TradeArabia News Service