World’s Largest Desalination Plant begins Operations in Hadera, Relying on Dow’s Reverse Osmosis (RO) Technology

Israel President Shimon Peres inaugurated on May 16, 2010, the world’s largest operational seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant located in Hadera. The plant, located on the Mediterranean coast of Israel, 50 km north of Tel Aviv, is designed to supply about 20 percent of Israel’s domestic potable water requirement.

Constructed and operated by H2ID, a consortium of IDE Technologies (IDE) and Shikun & Binui Housing and Construction, the Hadera plant is part of a desalination master plan to help address the chronic water resource problems in this region.

With more than 53,000 DOW FILMTEC™ reverse osmosis elements installed to produce up to 456,000 cubic meters of potable water per day from seawater (including the capacity extension of 88,000 cbm/d), Hadera is another milestone project for desalination in terms of size. Including the expansion, it has currently the largest installed SWRO capacity globally.

IDE selected DOW FILMTEC™ elements to meet the demanding needs of the SWRO process based on extensive pilot testing of new lower energy elements and also on the experience gained from the long-term performance of the more than 40,000 DOW FILMTEC™ reverse osmosis elements installed at the 365,000 m3/day SWRO desalination plant in Ashkelon, taken into service 2005. At that time Ashkelon was the world’s largest SWRO desalination plant. In the five years since the start-up, DOW FILMTEC™ elements have operated continuously, meeting all requirements, including high pH tolerance, continuous low pressure operation and low membrane fouling contributing to cost-effective, reliable performance.

“We are very excited that the Hadera plant is up and running”, said Ian Barbour, general manager, Dow Water & Process Solutions, “the successful operation of this plant in one of the most water-challenged areas of the world speaks to the bright future seawater reverse osmosis technology has in addressing the needs of regions, that are facing growing demand and limited availability of freshwater resources.”

Fuente: Waterefficiency.net