Toray Industries, Inc. has announced that its reverse osmosis (RO) membrane business has won a series of orders from four seawater desalination plants in the Arabian Gulf.
These medium- to large-scale orders follow the earlier orders from the Hamma desalination plant in Algeria (capacity of 200,000 cu meters per day) and the Shuaiba desalination plant in Saudi Arabia (capacity of 150,000 cu meters per day). These seawater desalination plants supplying its products are scheduled to start operations in the current fiscal year or later.
Toray received new orders for the following four plants, for a total capacity of 332,000 cu meters per day:
• Fujairah II desalination plant - United Arab Emirates (UAE), capacity of 136,000 cu meters per day, scheduled to start operations in 2009;
• Shuwaikh desalination plant - Kuwait, capacity of 136,000 cu meters per day, scheduled to start operations in 2010;
• The Pearl Qatar desalination plant - Qatar, capacity of 35,000 cu meters per day, scheduled to start operations in 2008; and
• Qarn Aram desalination plant - Oman, capacity of 25,000 cu meters per day, scheduled to start operations in 2008.
Fujaira II is the first RO seawater desalination plant under the Fujairah 2 Independent Water and Power Project currently in progress in Qidfa, the Emirate of Fujairah of the UAE. Veolia Environment of France won the contract to construct the plant.
Shuwaikh is the first large-scale RO desalination plant in Kuwait, and Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction Co., Ltd. of South Korea has won the order to construct the plant. Kuwait has the world’s largest membrane wastewater treatment plant in Sulaibiya (capacity: 320,000 m3/day), which uses Toray’s RO membranes, and began operations in 2005.
The Pearl is a man-made resort island being built off the coast of Qatar’s capital, Doha. The plant is currently being constructed by Metito of UAE. This is the first order Toray has received from a Qatari plant.
Qarn Aram is a plant for the Qarn Aram oil exploration in Oman, and Veolia Environment of France won the order for building the plant. This is also the first time that Toray is supplying RO membranes to a plant in Oman.
These four countries are in the Arabian Gulf, where the desalination of seawater is highly challenging and the region had very few RO desalination plants until recently. High salinity (1.3 times the level of Red Sea on the west of Saudi Arabia), high temperatures exceeding 35° C and highly turbid inland seawater are the main factors that make desalination in the region a challenging task.
In addition to the Al Jubail desalination plant in Saudi Arabia, Toray has been supplying RO membranes in the region to plants in outlying islands of UAE and resorts, and this track record was instrumental in the company winning the string of orders announced this time.
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