Here are a few pics from our just-completed Project for the Oman government. It’s a 250,000 m3/day capacity water making plant that converts sea-water to potable water using Reverse Osmosis Technology – colloquially known as the Water Desalination plant in this part of the world. The whole of the Middle East runs on such water. To describe the process briefly: the raw sea-water is passed through Air Floatation chambers where small suspended solids are coagulated with the addition of coagulants and then skimmed off from the surface after being lifted through controlled aeration. This water is then passed through a battery of Filters comprising garnet (Coarse), sand (fine) and charcoal. These filters go into an automatic backwashing sequence where the flow of water is reversed along with air-scouring and the scum disposed of in the wastewater channel. The filtered water is then diverted to a battery of cartridge filters before it is finally pushed under very high pressure into the Reverse Osmosis (RO) modules, which generates two outputs. The permeate – sweetened water devoid of any salt – and the brine, the salty residue. The permeate then goes through a battery of post-treatment chemicals where the pH (acidity) and the minerals are controlled to make it potable (drinkable) – before pumping it into the export pipeline to the reservoirs for distribution. The whole plant is automated and can start with a push of a single button from the Control Room. The quality of water is measured in real-time through on-line analysers so that even an infant can drink it straight from the tap!!!

Built at a cost of 186 million USD, this is now the biggest Water Desalination plant in Oman. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the multinational, Multi-Cultural group of people who worked day and night to complete this project! A big thank you to all stakeholders who were associated with this job.

At every onset of summer in India, I see a lot of posts on water scarcity. With such a long coastline, I keep wondering why we do not get into this water-making technology to augment the shortfall in rain – especially in places like Gujarat, Rajasthan and Chennai? And spend crores in planting ‘cloud seeds’ whose effectivity is questionable. Is #Narendra_Modi listening?