On Oct 10, the Caofeidian membrane desalination project, which had a daily production of 50,000 tons come to running successfully. It is the largest domestic membrane desalination project and the key desalination demonstration project of the National Development and Reform Commission. It was constructed by the Development Center of Water Treatment Technology in Hangzhou.
The success of the project signifies the overall desalination technology of the China National Chemical Corporation has reached an advanced international level.
The Caofeidian membrane desalination project is jointly invested by Caofeidian Infrastructure Construction and Investment Company and Norway Aqualyng (China) Co., Ltd. The project covers 2.13 hectares with construction area of 13,000 square meters. It draws sea water from Bohai Sea and offers municipal drinking water after desalinating the seawater. The project is the only desalination project with a daily production of 50,000 tons. The bidding was won by a domestic enterprise in international tender offerings, was designed independently and constructed in the form of an overall contract by domestic enterprise. The success of the project is of vital significance for the water supplies in the Caofeidian industrial area and has demonstrative effects for applying desalination technology in super-large municipal-level desalination projects.
The project adopted the method of air flotation plus ultra-filtration in the seawater reverse osmosis preprocessing, which can effectively solve the problem of high COD in the water of BoHai Gulf. It can also help remove the oil. The project is the first to apply air flotation technology in the seawater reverse osmosis preprocessing. It adopts the upstream mineralized system while it drains thick seawater out to nearby saltworks to produce salts. This can save the area of saltworks and solve the thick seawater problem. It is a demonstration project for establishing large desalination projects with high applicability in the northern coastal regions.
Desalination is emerging industry for oceans in the country. Since the first project, which had a daily production of 500 tons, was successfully established by the Hangzhou Water Treatment Center in 1997. The desalination technology of our country has made rapid progress in the past 15 years and has increasingly been valued by the government at different levels, which clearly encourages and promotes desalination’s independent development on a large scale. The project provides strong confidence and technology support for desalination technology promotion during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan.
China National Chemical Corporation has the largest industrial scale and strongest technology force of desalination in our country; Hangzhou Water Treatment Center is one of the earliest institutes to engage in membrane desalination research. It is always leading the development of membrane desalination technology and occupies more than 70 percent of the market. During the past 15 years, the Center, through continuous technology improvement, has cut the power consumption in each ton of seawater desalination from 10 kilowatts per hour to 4.5 kilowatts per hour, reducing more than half of the investing cost of each ton of water. This makes it possible to promote desalination on a large scale.