WORK ON SOUTH AFRICA’S BIGGEST DESALINATION PLANT TO START
DATE : 2 JUNE 2010
WORK ON SOUTH AFRICA’S BIGGEST DESALINATION PLANT TO START
Construction work will commence within the next two weeks on the Mossel Bay Municipality’s seawater desalination plant of between R180 and R200 million at Voorbaai, Mossel Bay. With a yield of 15 million litres of desalinated water a day, it will be the biggest plant of its kind by far to date in South Africa.
The first contractor will go on site on 14 June 2010 to start laying a pipeline as part of the project that will supply 10 million litres of water a day to the Municipality and 5 million litres a day to PetroSA’s synthetic fuels plant at Mossel Bay. The petroleum company will contribute R80 million towards the cost of the project. The plant is scheduled to go in production in November 2010.
The biggest seawater desalination plant in operation at present is at Kenton-on-Sea in the Eastern Cape. It has a capacity of 1,8 million litres a day. A plant that will deliver two million litres a day is under construction at Knysna.
Although the desalination of sea water has been considered as a potential source of potable water for Mossel Bay in the longer term, the crippling drought being suffered in the area at present required that the Municipality, in conjunction with PetroSA, embark on this as an emergency project. The project will augment the town’s existing water sources as well as ensure the continued operations of the fuels plant, which is highly dependent on a sustained supply of water for operational purposes.
The Southern Cape is experiencing its worst drought in 150 years since records for the area have been kept. The Wolwedans Dam, which is the Municipality’s as well as PetroSA’s main water source is expected to run empty by October 2010 if it does not rain enough before then. It is estimated that approximately 300 mm of rain would have to fall over a fairly short period of time to get the dam back to an acceptable level again.
Following the implementation of water restrictions in the third quarter of 2009, the Municipality’s average daily consumption of water has dropped to 14,7 million litres in April 2010. PetroSA’s consumption remained steady at its normal production requirement of 15 million litres a day.
“When in full production the plant will bring welcome relief. It will, however, not be enough to make Mossel Bay self sufficient and the need for every user of municipal water in Mossel Bay to use water sparingly remains as critical as it had been over the past number of months,” said the Municipal Manager, Dr Michele Gratz.
“Sea water desalination water is not the cheapest source of water that there is. It is an expensive type of plant and the operating costs are also high. Records, however, show that Mossel Bay has had several extended drought spells over the last 150 years. Together with the sharp growth in the town’s population over the last decade, it has stressed the need for Mossel Bay to become less dependent on surface water,” she said.
Dr Gratz said the reverse osmosis plant has been delayed for about a week as vital equipment was delayed because of the transport workers strike. Completion is now scheduled for the end of June 2010. This project will make 5 million litres of purified effluent water a day available to PetroSA for industrial use and thus ease the pressure on the Wolwedans Dam so that more water can remain available for municipal use.
She said that no significant success has been achieved so far with the borehole project, but the project that will entail the drilling of ten boreholes will continue over the next few weeks with the aim of finding about three million litres of water a day from this source.
Ends
Back
Print
Email
Favourites
Export to PDFRelated Articles
