Toray Industries Inc. announced it has won an order from Hyflux Ltd. to supply reverse osmosis (RO) membranes for the world’s largest membrane-based desalination plant to be, with the actual delivery of the product planned for 2010, the company said. The new plant, to start operating in 2011, will have a water production capacity of 500,000 cu meters per day, up 50% compared with the current biggest plant in Israel, which has a capacity of 330,000 cu meters per day.
The plant for which Toray is supplying its RO membranes will be constructed in Magtaa, Algeria, located near Oran, the country’s second largest city. Hyflux Ltd. of Singapore won the contract to design, build and manage operation of the plant for 25 years.
Toray counts synthetic organic chemistry, polymer chemistry, biotechnology and nanotechnology as the core technologies driving its business expansions, the company said.
The RO membranes that Toray will supply to the Magtaa Seawater Desalination Plant have two distinguishing features, the company said: the world’s highest level of boron removal capability, and the ability to produce large water throughput while saving energy.
Toray, exploiting its proprietary molecular design technology, the company said, is able to achieve the removal of boron while controlling the microstructure of pore diameter at the sub-nanometer level, which will enable the Magtaa plant to continue producing water at optimum levels.
Algeria is located on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, a region that faces terrible resource shortages. Given this environment, the Algerian government has been actively working on seawater desalination and has been constructing mega plants with water production capacities of 100,000 cu meters to 200,000 cu meters per day, one after another, according to Toray.
Source: Toray
