ACWA Services to start upgrades for La Rosière desalination plant in the British Isles

ACWA Services, a unit under water and wastewater solutions provider ACWA Group, will start upgrade works this month at the La Rosière desalination plant in the British Isles.

The upgrade work will increase its capacity, ensure security of water supply from the facility during low rainfall, and bring down its operation costs.

The firm will also be responsible for deployment of an advanced energy recovery system at the facility which can recover hydraulic energy from the rejected stream of concentrated brine.

The energy recovery system is expected to bring down the facility’s power consumption by 36%.

The desalination facility, which is owned and operated by UK utility Jersey Water, chiefly functions as a standby water source that replenishes water level of the island’s Val de la Mare reservoir during prolonged dry periods.

The facility uses reverse osmosis as the purification process and was set up in 1999.

Jersey Water chief executive Helier Smith said: "With the current plant at the end of its serviceable life, ACWA’s solution will increase capacity and resilience for the Island’s public water supply in times of low rainfall and built-in energy recovery will ensure that running costs are lower when the plant is online."

ACWA is expected to deliver turnkey solution involving design, procurement, installation and commissioning at the facility.

The scope of work for the project includes redesigning and expansion of the existing seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) process streams at the plant with new pressure vessels, an additional dual media filter, next generation high capacity RO membranes, pre-treatment systems and associated equipment.

The planned upgrade is expected to raise the plant’s fresh water production from the present six million litres per day to up to 10.8 million litres.

Equipment to be delivered by ACWA will allow the facility to expand its daily capacity to 15 million litres, in view of potential water supply demands in the region.

ACWA Services general manager Peter Brewer said: "To overcome strict Planning Authority constraints and limited space on site, we have included measures to use the existing buildings and ancillary equipment to their maximum potential, whilst offering the most robust solution.

"The hi-tech energy recovery technology also gives us the flexibility to vary the reverse osmosis system recovery rate to maximise process productivity and energy efficiency over a wide range of feed conditions."

Jersey Water had submitted formal planning application for the upgrade initiative by the end of 2014. The firm had assured that the project will neither affect ongoing water supply of the customers nor their bills.