Online article written by Michelle Kovacevic
A $3.1 BILLON desalination plant, the largest of its kind in Australia, has been commissioned by the Victorian government under the ‘Our Water, Our future’ water saving strategy.
With the last decade said to be the driest on record in Victoria, residents are being put under the pump with stage 4 water restrictions recently implemented in Geelong, making water increasingly precious as the months tick on.
Victorian Premier, John Brumby, has committed to providing $4.3 billion in major water infrastructure projects which is the most any Victorian government has committed to saving water in the last 25 years. “We have implemented the most successful water saving campaign in Australia”, he said, “with businesses and households jointly reducing their water use by 22 per cent in Melbourne and by similar amounts in regional centres.”
The plant will pump salt water from the Bass Strait that will be purified by reverse osmosis- a process that forces the salt water from a region of high solute concentration to low solute concentration through several semi-permeable membranes. The government plans to make the desalination plant carbon neutral by offsetting the 90MW of energy required to apply pressure greater than the osmotic pressure in order to force the salt water to flow against its concentration gradient.
The excess brine, a form of concentrated salt water that is generated from this process, will be pumped back into the Bass Strait. A spokesperson on behalf of the Department of Sustainability and Environment says that a range of environmental studies are currently investigating the effects of this salt water concentration discharge. The Department are working together with the Minister of Planning to ascertain whether an Environmental Effects Statement will be required.
When the plant opens, currently scheduled for 2011, it will produce an additional 150 billion litres of drinking water each year, providing Melbourne with approximately one third of its annual water requirements. Pipelines are being built to the Melbourne, Geelong, Westernport and South Gippsland areas.
However this is not the first project of its kind to be implemented in Australia. Perth’s Kwinana Desalination Plant is currently the largest desalination plant to be powered by renewable energy. It has been so successful that the Western Australian government plans to expand the plant to provide an annual 45GL of drinking water which will supply 17% of Perth’s water needs.
Desalination projects have also been successfully implemented in countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the latter of which boasts the world’s largest desalination plant, capable of producing 300 million cubic metres of water per year.
Construction of the Wonthaggi plant will commence in mid 2009.
Tags: desalination, water
April 27, 2008 at 9:12 pm |
This is a good article on the technology involved in removing salt from water using an energy expensive technique.
One concern I have often voiced on air is that ALL decisions in the 21st century should be taken with the environment at the top of the list, then we can consider other priorities. It seems that in recent times, the State Government has taken a different path, with environment as a 3rd place getter. The bay dredging project and the desal plant seem to be good examples of this stategy. We are now desperately trying to make up for poor infrastructure building over the last decade in these areas.
May 13, 2008 at 12:08 am |
Tags to Water not taken with a grain of salt…
Tags: perth western australia to Online article written by Michelle Kovacevic [ ocean waves] A $3.1 BILLON desalination plant, the largest of its kind in Australia, has been commissioned … in the last 25 years. “We have implemented the most succ…