Greentech Lead America: Xylem, a global water technology company, announced it has won a contract to provide a dissolved air flotation (DAF) pre-treatment system to help ensure an uninterrupted potable water supply to Abu Dhabi Emirate and the east coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Xylem’s Leopold Clari-DAF system is more than 95 percent effective in removing these microorganisms prior to desalination ensuring the production of clean, fresh drinking water.
The company will develop the new pre-treatment DAF system for the Fujairah 1 Independent Water and Power Plant (IWPP), which is owned by Emirates Sembcorp Water & Power Company (ESC), a joint venture between Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (TAQA), Sembcorp Industries and Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority (ADWEA).
The new system will have a capacity of 136,000 cubic meters per day (reverse osmosis output) to accommodate an anticipated 15 percent increase in the population by 2016. It will serve both the existing and new seawater reverse osmosis plants, which have a combined capacity of 306,760 cubic meters per day and will be one of the world’s largest operating desalination plants.
“Xylem’s pre-treatment desalination expertise has been instrumental at the Shuwaikh Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant in Kuwait and their involvement was critical for us to win this Fujairah contract,” said Jesus Sancho, international engineering contractor responsible for the team of companies that won the contract.
Xylem’s Leopold Clari-DAF systems create millions of microbubbles that float the algae to the surface of the water where they are removed as floating sludge, usually by mechanical skimming. This technology is also extremely effective for the removal of free and emulsified oil which is very important for the protection of the downstream reverse osmosis system.