14 January 2014
Spain’s Veolia Environnement has won a contract to build a seawater desalination plant at the Az Zour North complex in Kuwait for $437m.
Under an engineering, purchasing and construction contract won in partnership with Hyundai Heavy Industries, Veolia subsidiary Sidem will build a desalination plant with a daily production capacity of 486,400 cubic meters of water. The plant will use multi-effect distillation technology, which is able to adapt to fluctuations in water demand.
Hyundai will be responsible for building a 1,500-MW power station.
The new plant will produce more than 480,000 cubic meters of fresh water from the Persian Gulf (Wikimedia Commons)
A deal with the Kuwait government states that it will buy all electricity generation and water produced for the next 40 years.
Work will begin before the end of 2013 and is scheduled for completion by the end of 2016.
Construction of the desalination plant, 100km south of Kuwaiti City, is part of the Az Zour North electricity generation and water production project, the country’s first public-private partnership consisting of France’s GDF Suez Energy, Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation and Kuwait’s Abdullah Hamad Al-Sagar and brothers.
In 2010, Veolia was selected to build the Az Zour South desalination plant, for which it opted for reverse osmosis membrane technology. With a daily capacity of 136,000 cubic meters of water, this plant is currently in the start-up phase.
