NEWS

6Membrane Technology July 2008

Hyflux wins bid for RO plant in Algeria

Hyflux Limited, one of Asia’s lead-ing environmental companies that

specialises in membrane technology, has won a bid to build, in Algeria, what is claimed to be the world’s larg-est sea-water desalination plant, with a project value of US$468 million.

Hyflux’s wholly owned subsidiary MenaSpring Utility (S) Pte Limited has been awarded the contract by Algeria Energy Company (AEC) – the government company that handles power and water privatisation exercise in Algeria – to build a sea-water desalination plant in Magtaa, Oran region, in the western part of the country, with a capacity of 0.5 million m3 (over 132 mil-lion gallons) a day using reverse osmosis (RO) membrane technology. In terms of volume pro-duction it is thought that this will be the world’s largest plant of its kind. This is also the largest project to be undertaken by the group to date.

Hyflux says that it won the bid amid intense competition from five other contenders includ-ing water organisations from Spain and other reputable international players from the UK, Japan and USA.

Commenting on the contract, Ms Olivia Lum, Group Chief Executive Officer of Hyflux, said: ‘We are proud to be the successful bid-der for this prestigious project, prevailing over intense competition from other reputable inter-national contenders. This is the largest sea-water desalination project in the world as well as the largest project to be undertaken by the company to-date.’

‘Besides being the most competitive bidder, our proven track record in delivering large-scale desalination projects, coupled with our propri-etary membrane technology and our ability to offer total integrated systems are the key to win-ning the bid,’ continued Lum.

‘This also demonstrates Hyflux’s innovation in membrane technology. An unprecedented record, the project also marks the world’s single largest ultrafiltration plant which will use our proprietary Kristal membrane. This contract has further strengthened the company’s position as a global leader in sea-water desalination.’

The company is also pleased to partner with AEC for the project. Added Lum: ‘We believe AEC’s commitment to supply clean water to support Algeria’s rapid urbanisation plans, cou-pled with Hyflux’s water-related technological abilities, will bring forth competitively priced desalinated water to meet the pace of infrastruc-tural developments in Algeria. Our timely entry into the market reinforces Hyflux’s vision in

capturing the vast opportunities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.’

A joint-venture company – 51% owned by MenaSpring (or its nominee) and 49% owned by AEC – will be incorporated to build the plant on a design-own-operate-transfer basis. The operations and maintenance (O&M) of the project will be undertaken by a wholly owned subsidiary of the company. The O&M fees will contribute towards the long-term recurring income for the firm.

Under a 25-year concession agreement, the project company will supply the desalinated water to L’Algerienne Des Eaux (ADE), the state-owned national public water entity of Algeria, and to the country’s national oil company Sonatrach SpA, on a ‘take-or-pay’ basis. The plant is expected to take about 2.5 years to build.

In addition to the Magtaa project, Hyflux is already undertaking the development, construc-tion and operation of a sea-water desalination plant based in Tlemcen, which is rated at 200 000 m3

(around 53 million gallons) a day.According to Hyflux, these two projects com-

bined will make it the country’s single largest pro-vider of water purified by desalination – contribut-ing to more than 30% of the total capacity.

Hyflux has operations and projects in Singapore, South-East Asia, China, the Middle East and North Africa, and India. Specialising in membrane technologies, it provides integrated systems and offers services that include process design and optimisation, pilot testing, fabrication and installation, engineering, procurement and construction. It is also engaged in the commis-sioning, operation and maintenance of a wide range of liquid treatment systems on a turnkey or design, build, own and operate arrangement. Hyflux currently focuses on four core businesses – water, industrial manufacturing processes, speci-ality materials and energy (oil recycling).

In 2006, Hyflux received the ‘Water Company of the Year’ award from the UK’s Global Water Intelligence at the Global Water Awards. It also made it into Forbes’ ‘Asia’s Best Under a Billion List’ 2006.

Contact:

Hyflux Ltd, Hyflux Building, 202 Kallang Bahru,

Singapore 339339. Tel: +65 6214 0777,

www.hyflux.com

Dow continues to provide ‘drought-proof’ water supply for Florida

Dow Water Solutions, a busi-ness unit of The Dow Chemical

Company, reports that its FilmTec reverse osmosis (RO) membranes are contributing to the success of the Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant, in Florida, USA.

As more communities around the world struggle with water scarcity, desalination pro-vides a viable option for municipal water supply in coastal regions, says the company. In west–central Florida, where the proximity of the Gulf of Mexico belies the land’s diminishing supplies of drinking water, the Tampa Bay facility is successfully helping to supplement river and ground-water sources.

The facility, which is believed to be the larg-est sea-water desalination plant in the USA, is operated by American Water-Pridesa, a joint venture of Acciona Agua of Spain and American Water. It produces up to 94 635 m3

(25 million gallons) of water per day using 9408 FilmTec RO membranes provided by Dow Water Solutions. The plant’s output pro-vides a supply of drinking water for 2.4 million residents of the Tampa Bay area.

‘When American Water-Pridesa selected FilmTec membranes for the Tampa Bay project we were confident that the 20-cm (8-inch) FilmTec SW30HR-380 membranes would stand up to the challenge,’ said Ian Barbour, General Manager, Dow Water Solutions.

‘FilmTec sea-water desalination membranes have a proven track record earned by their consistent, reliable and long-lasting perform-ance in many of the world’s largest desalination projects. Desalination facilities, such as the ones in Perth, Australia and Ashkelon, Israel, turn sea water into high-quality drinking water in a cost-effective and energy-efficient way, mainly through the technological advantages that our membranes offer.’

There are seven trains of FilmTec membrane elements installed at the Tampa Bay plant. The membranes, each with an active area of about 35 m2 (around 380 ft2), are highly resistant to bio-fouling and handle cleaning well, which, together with routine maintenance, should provide a useful life span of three to five years, or longer. According to the company, FilmTec SW30HR-380 membrane elements possess an extremely effective salt rejection to meet drink-ing-water specifications, including less than 200 ppm of chloride ions.

‘Dow Water Solutions’ expertise in mem-brane technology is critical to the successful long-term durability of the Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant. The FilmTec membranes are robust and are delivering quality water to the res-idents of Tampa Bay,’ commented John Young, Chief Operating Officer of American Water.

‘Dow Water Solutions’ commitment to research and continuous improvement of the

NEWS

July 2008 Membrane Technology7

FilmTec product is exemplary. We look for-ward to smooth RO operations in Tampa as well as supporting Dow in performance test-ing advanced FilmTec membranes at our test facilities in Spain,’ added Andy Shea, USA Development Director for Acciona Agua.

An inadequate supply of safe drinking water affects 1.2 billion people worldwide. Membrane technology from Dow Water Solutions enables communities to broaden their water sourcing options, and FilmTec membranes continue to play a part in making desalination an economi-cal way of ‘harvesting’ and treating sea water. Developing and perfecting technology to provide alternative sources of water for both industrial uses and human consumption is one of Dow Chemical Company’s 2015 Sustainability Goals.

With more than 1000 employees, Dow Water Solutions maintains five production facilities worldwide to manufacture, market and sell FilmTec RO membranes, Dowex ion-exchange resins, Adsorbsia GTO titanium-based arsenic removal media, and ultrafiltration and electro-deionsation components. It also makes, markets and sells water purification systems in China.

Contacts:

The Dow Chemical Co, Liquid Separations, Customer

Information Center, PO Box 1206, Midland, MI 48642-

1206, USA. Tel: +1 989 636 9086, www.dowwatersolu-

tions.com, www.dow.com

Dow Customer Information Group, Prins

Boudewijnlaan 41, B-2650 Edegem, Belgium.

Tel: +32 3 450 2240

UF-based ‘Hemobag’ prevents blood wastage

A‘blood salvage’ device, that uses ultrafiltration (UF), from US com-

pany Global Blood Resources Llc (GBR), is helping to reduce blood wastage when patients undergo major surgery.

A recent paper in a journal for perfusionists – the health professionals who manage patients on heart and lung bypass machines during open heart surgery – reports how GBR’s on-line waste calculator can be used to estimate the cost of blood wastage associated with the ‘cell washing’ machines most commonly used during heart surgery to salvage a patient’s own blood for auto-transfusion.

Such wastage usually requires transfusion of increasingly costly blood components donated by others (allogeneic blood), the very type of

risky transfusion that blood-salvage machines were designed to prevent. The GBR calculator exposes how this previously unknown wastage can cost billions of dollars each year – money that could be saved by using the company’s sal-vage device called the Hemobag.

Although the tainted blood scandals of the 1980s and 1990s are largely over, because improved blood donor screening tests are now used for diseases such as acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and hepatitis C, discouraging news still abounds, says GBR. News reports commonly feature severe blood shortages and research that documents newly recognised transfusion risks, such as how older, stored blood may put heart surgery patients at increased risk.

In response, the medical community has moved to manage blood usage by minimising transfusion of donated blood, and instead sav-ing and transfusing the patient’s own blood that would otherwise be lost during surgery.

Cardiovascular heart disease is still the lead-ing cause of death in the USA. To help correct this, each day approximately a thousand people undergo heart surgery, with over 325 000 cases occurring annually and growing 5% each year. Blood salvage has been used extensively in cardiac surgery, which historically has been a major user of the nation’s blood supply – con-suming between 15–20% of the blood trans-fused in the USA. Over 50% of patients having heart surgery receive at least one transfusion from a volunteer blood donor.

The paper, entitled ‘On-line Autotransfusion Waste Calculator’, published in the Journal of The American Society of Extra-Corporeal Technology (Vol. 40, No. 1, March 2008), describes how GBR’s calculator uses a spread-sheet to estimate the cost of wastage associated with the traditional machines that salvage only red blood cells. These machines wash away all other blood elements such as platelets, required for blood to clot, and plasma, the fluid portion of blood that contains clotting factors and important proteins necessary for patient stability.

With insufficient platelets and clotting fac-tors, patients bleed and require transfusion with red cells and other expensive, scarce blood components. In contrast, the Hemobag uses whole blood UF, a process that conserves whole blood containing red blood cells and all of the other constituents that are washed away by ‘cell washer’ blood-salvaging machines.

‘The old standard of washing away viable platelets and plasma proteins must be re-evalu-ated, as wasting these blood constituents is not sound blood management in cardiac and other major surgeries,’ commented Keith Samolyk, a perfusionist and founder of GBR.

I n B r i e f

Bruno Steis joins Inge’s executive boardBruno Steis, formerly a partner in the company Siemens Venture Capital GmbH, has joined Inge AG’s executive board – expanding the team that currently comprises Chief Executive Officer Wolfgang Distler and Chief Technology Officer Peter Berg. Steis’ new responsibilities will include strategy and business develop-ment. Inge says that by enlarging its executive board its is responding to the strong growth it is experiencing, especially in Asia. Based in Greifenberg, Germany, the firm develops and produces ultrafiltration membranes, modules and racks that are used to treat wastewater, and drinking, process and sea water.

Rohm and Haas licenses deionisation technology to SAMCOIn the USA, SAMCO Technologies Incorporated of Tonawanda, New York, USA, has received a license from Rohm and Haas to manufac-ture and sell its Amberpack deionisation sys-tems for industrial water treatment applications. According to Rohm and Haas, which is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the system oper-ates at an efficiency that exceeds 95%, lowering the life-cycle cost of water purification processes by increasing yield and minimising waste. This exclusive license covers the USA and Canada. It also grants SAMCO certain exclusive marketing and manufacturing rights to the Amberpack technology. SAMCO offers products for water, wastewater and process purification and separa-tion. The company supplies equipment and turnkey units, including a complete line of membrane and ion-exchange systems.

Elga offers rental service for water treatment equipmentUK-based Elga Process Water is now offering its customers a rental service called ‘All-in-Pack’. Under this approach a customer simply pays a fixed, quarterly amount by direct debit and Elga provides the water treatment plant and services it, just as it would if the customer had purchased the equipment outright. ‘It works in exactly the same way whether the customer wants a single piece of equipment or a complete pharmaceutical water system,’ explained John Pethers, National Service Director of Elga Process Water.

Hydranautics names Brett Andrews as President and COOBrett Andrews has been named as President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Hydranautics, a membrane technology company based in Oceanside, California, USA. Andrews, formerly the Vice-President of Sales and Marketing at the firm, has over 19 years of experience in the water treatment field. Founded in 1963, Hydranautics became part of Japan’s multi-billion dollar corpo-ration Nitto Denko during 1987.