Protec Arisawa and SUEZ: Without our collaboration, the Barka IWP plant would not have been possible
In Oman, global leaders in water treatment processes and desalination plants relied on Protec Arisawa to manufacture the pressure vessels for their most important project: the Barka Independent Water Project (IWP) plant. This 281,000-m3/d capacity seawater Reverse Osmosis facility is the largest desalination plant in the country.
Finally, the Barka Desalination Company announced the opening of the Barka Independent Water Project (IWP) plant in July 2018, an essential infrastructure for the development of energy and water production for the main water network of Oman. At Protec Arisawa, we consider this major event as a new success of our state-of-the-art pressure vessel solutions.
However, Protec was not alone in this project: the Barka Independent Water Project was completed in less than 30 months by a consortium consisting of Itochu Corporation, ENGIE, SUEZ and Towell Engineering, under a 20-year Water Purchase Agreement (WPA). Thanks to the association of these main actors in water industry, the new seawater treatment complex has a capacity of 281,000 cubic meters per day: the largest desalination plant in the country. As accorded, SUEZ will operate and maintain the plant for twenty years.
Who are Protec’s partners in IWP?
SUEZ is a multinational company headquartered in Paris (France), dedicated to the operation and procurement of water, electricity and gas services in several countries around the world. Today, this group employs more than 160,000 people. With a presence on all five continents, the French company is a key player in the sustainable management of resources. SUEZ generated total revenues of €15.3B in 2016.
In this case, SUEZ was responsible for the design, construction, ownership, financing, operation and maintenance of this brand new seawater reverse osmosis desalination plant, located at a coastal site near Barka (in the Al Batinah region), on the Gulf coast of Oman, 50 km west of Muscat.
Protec Arisawa supplied the last pressure vessels for membrane filtration systems in October 2016, designed in order to reach the lowest energy consumption available from seawater RO elements, and the commissioning was started in early 2018. Protec Arisawa’s scope of supply consisted in:
- 3006x BPV-8-1200-MSP-7
- 175x PRO-8-450-MSP-7
Thanks to the 3,181 Protec FRP pressure vessels, the whole complex will be able to desalinate up to 281,000 cubic meters per day applying the newest reverse osmosis techniques. Since July, the Barka plant is providing an environmentally-friendly and sustained supply of high-quality drinking water with minimum electrical energy consumption, thus offering more energy efficiency than the current state-of-the-art desalination systems.
As global leader in FRP pressure vessels for reverse osmosis water purification treatments, Protec is extremely pleased to collaborate with the major players in the sector.
Oman: A territory full of new projects
But this is only the beginning… Oman Power and Water Procurement Company (OPWP) initiated the pre-qualification process for developers to set-up two new independent water projects (IWPs) in the same Al Batinah region.
The two future water desalination plants will have a combined capacity to produce 250,000 cubic meters of water per day, and will be located at North Al Batinah and Barka, confirming this Red Sea area as a promising market for desalination processes, due to the growing number of membrane desalination plants in the region.
Therefore, our objective must be to expand Protec’s field of action in the Omani market, supported by the quality of the best fiber-reinforced pressure vessel solutions for water purification. At Protec we live and work every day to take part in the most ambitious projects, both from an industrial and technological viewpoint. Over 40 years of experience confirm our global leadership in the development and production of FRP vessels. This major hit in Oman is the best proof that Protec Arisawa has further reinforced its leadership position as a main supplier for the desalination industry, racks and Reverse Osmosis processes.