Sewa awards contract for energy recover technology for power plant

Aqua Engineering GmbH and ERI have signed a supply agreement for PX energy recovery devices for the 24 million gallons per day (MGD) plant to be located in Sharjah.

The plant was awarded to Austrian company Aqua Engineering GmbH, a subsidiary of Christ Water Technology AG, by the Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority (Sewa).

The overall capacity of the Hamriyah facility will be 120 million gallon daily of fresh water by reverse osmosis technology and 48 million gallon daily by a thermal desalination process called multiple effect distillation (MED).

This phase of the project will include Pressure Exchanger energy recovery devices which will save an estimated 13 megawatts of power.

Designed with a total of eight SWRO trains operating in parallel, the devices will provide fail-safe redundancy and reliability with little or no down-time. Currently, the plant is under construction and scheduled for start-up in 2009. Initial work on the site included a 600 MW power plant.

The Sewa project will eventually supply 2000 MW of power and 168 million gallon daily of desalinated water. In late 2007, ERI announced the release of its PX-260 device, the latest addition to its PX technology line of products. The PX-260 is part of the 65-Series product line and is the Company’s largest commercially available energy recovery device, handling brine flow rates of up to 260 gallons per minute (59 cubic meters per hour) – nearly 20 per cent greater capacity than ERI’s former largest device. It operates at the highest efficiency, providing the best overall energy savings and lowest cost of ownership of any commercially available energy recovery solution.

The Middle East has been a mainstay for ERI with many small to large plant installations across the region, ranging from small hotels in Egypt and UAE to larger projects in Saudi Arabia, among others. The company has a regional sales office in Dubai.

haseeb@khaleejtimes.com