Osmoflo provides 5 desalination plants for Gorgon Project.
Challenge
Broken Hill has relied on the Menindee Lakes as the town’s main water supply since the 1960’s. The Menindee Lakes is a chain of shallow ephemeral freshwater lakes connected to the Darling River to form a storage system.
In late 2015, due to the drought conditions in the Darling system the capacity of the lake system was close to empty.
This not only limits supply of water but also impact on the quality of water which deteriorates (salinity increases) due to the high evaporation rate. Under these conditions, Broken Hill’s Water Treatment Plant, designed to remove turbidity and organic matter using conventional filtration process, requires an upgrade with the reverse osmosis process to remove the excess salinity.
Therefore the requirement for an RO plant arose, which required completion in a very short time frame - 12 weeks, very careful installation and integration with the continuously operating upstream water filtration plant, along with numerous procedures and measures to comply with from the NSW Public Works who managed the overall project on behalf of Essential Water, the owner and operator of the Broken Hill WTP.
The new RO plant was required to be integrated with the existing water treatment facility on site - successful integration would require close management of the equipment interfaces.
With a 12 week time frame, the project was completed in a very short time frame to all required standards set out by the NSW Public Works.
The Gorgon project is Australia’s largest energy related project, made up of a consortium of major energy players.
Challenge
The Gorgon project, Australia’s largest energy related project, had a requirement for potable water. The consortium’s construction partners selected Osmoflo to provide the water solution, which was required to be able to withstand cyclones that were typical of the location.
Solution
Osmoflo designed and constructed four desalination plants in total for the project. These four desalination plants had a combined capacity of 7ML/d. A combination of skid-mounted and containerised, the plants had a cyclone rating and utilises technology that minimises energy consumption, yet maximises the percentage of treated water that can be recovered from the saline raw water source. One of Osmoflo’s contracts for Gorgon is a 480 kL/day Demin WTP. The plant is built to demanding oil and gas specifications including human factors design. Similarly to the proposed demin plant it utilises 2-Pass-RO and EDI fed from a potable water supply with TDS of 500mg/L An additional fifth plant was rented from Osmoflo which was located on a vessel moored off of the Barrow Island coast, filling a short term requirement for an additional 2ML/d of treated water during the construction phase.
Result
The desalination plants were designed and constructed for the project providing a potable water source for the large scale project.
Other solutions
