Increasing Water Capacity for Tourism
Hurghada is one of the largest resort towns off the coast of the Red Sea in Egypt. Due to increased tourism demand, it has seen growing development with a surge of resorts and hotels. The town relies on desalination to supply drinking water and combat the lack of fresh water supply. Because of the high costs of providing potable water and energy, reducing energy consumption is critical. Safa Water Technology partnered with Interwater to retrofit two desalination plants by the Red Sea in order to lower their high energy consumption. Interwater elected to switch out the previous Pelton wheel energy recovery device (ERD) for Energy Recovery’s ERD, the PX 260, to increase plant capacity and efficiency.
Safa Water Technology provides water for consumption by hotels and resorts near the Red Sea with two reverse osmosis (RO) plants. Before the retrofit, each plant had a production capacity of 500 m3/day and a high specific energy consumption of 6.3 kWh/m3 . The plants had existing ERDs with reliability issues, including turbine failures. To increase production capacity while lowering the energy requirements and costs, the company collaborated with Interwater, which helps install and operate desalination plants, to implement a retrofit.
