Desalination & water treatments
General
You work to meet the growing demand for one of the earth's most vital resources, i.e. fresh water. Whether your field is water treatment facilities or large-scale seawater desalination plants, you have special requirements for the steels you use, in particular related to corrosion resistance under a wide variety of conditions and safety with respect to water contamination.
Visit the following pages for more information:
- Our Brands: Uranus® / Do it Duplex
- Our Products: Stainless steel & Nickel alloy plates
Desalination
Saltwater represents 97% of the earth's water resources. As the demand for fresh water increases and supplies dwindle, the need for desalination plants will continue to rise throughout the coming century. With water shortages present or looming in many regions, water desalination could become one of the world's biggest industries.
The oldest desalination techniques are thermal and involve evaporating water and collecting the condensate. The best known thermal processes for large-scale desalination include Multi-Stage Flash (MSF) and Multi-Effect Distillation (MED). These techniques can be combined with thermal power plants in dual-purpose cogeneration facilities.
Sea Water Reversed Osmosis (SWRO) is a newer desalination technique based on a membrane treatment process. Reverse Osmosis is used in nearly 80% of all desalination facilities worldwide and accounts for 50% of desalinated water production. This technique is steadily increasing in terms of output capacity and cost-effectiveness. In the future, hybrid desalination techniques combining thermal and reverse osmosis desalination with power generation may become a widely used solution, offering flexibility in operation, lower energy consumption, low construction cost, high plant availability and better power and water balancing.
Water treatments
Water treatment facilities extend from the pipes that brings the raw water to the plant on through to the tanks that store the clean, treated water. They include screens, settlement tanks, pipework, pumps, filters, ozone generators, chemical reactors and other mechanical equipment used to clean the water.
Steel solutions - Desalination
For your desalination facilities, you need steels that resist pitting and crevice corrosion by seawater at the temperatures reached in your process. High strength also lets you considerably reduce wall thicknesses, weight and the cost of installations.
Today, the material of choice when constructing desalination plants is duplex stainless steels. Industeel offers duplex products for evaporator shells and auxiliary systems in thermal techniques such as MED and MSF, or for high-pressure piping for SWRO processes.
Industeel suggests using high alloy grades, e.g. UR 2205, on the inlet side and a lean duplex alternative, e.g. UR 2304, for the outlet side where the chlorides have been removed. For other parts of the system, superduplex grades such as UR 2507 might be required. Superduplex and high molybdenum grades have been use in more aggressive areas.
The selection of the right steels for the different parts of desalination plants is a complex problem. Industeel has the necessary know-how to provide a proven product or develop an optimized solution to meet your needs.
Steel solutions - Water treatments
For your water treatment plants, you need steels that resist corrosion under a wide variety of conditions, including the presence of dissolved oxygen, chlorine or microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC). For tanks, the high strength also lets you considerably reduce wall thicknesses, weight and installation cost.
Water pipes can be made in many different materials including copper, concrete, etc. Stainless steel alternatives, in particular duplex grades, from Industeel provide a long lasting solution with low maintenance and virtually no metal release into the water. Industeel also has stainless steel solutions for water storage tanks that offer a number of advantages at all levels of water treatment processes. High corrosion resistance eliminates the need for protective coatings, corrosion protection systems and the control of water chemistry. There is virtually no contamination of water in contact with stainless steel and installations have a much longer service life. Stainless steel also offers these same advantages for the screens, settlement tanks, pipework, ozone generators, chemical reactors, equipment covers and other mechanical equipment used in water treatment plants.
The selection of the right steels for water treatment plants is a complex problem. Industeel has the necessary know-how to provide a proven product or develop an optimized solution to meet your needs.
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