Global Water Intelligence: IDE will remain at the cutting edge of the desalination industry.
IDE Technologies Ltd., a joint venture of Delek Group Ltd. (TASE: DLEKG) and Israel Chemicals Ltd. (TASE: ICL), has won awards for its Sorek desalination plant from British trade journalGlobal Water Intelligence. IDE's initiatives "will ensure that IDE remains at the cutting edge of the desalination industry for at least another four decades," says the award citation
The awards won by IDE included Desalination Company of the Year, and Desalination Plant of the Year, as well as Desalination Deal of the Year, which IDE won with its partners in 2013 for the Carlsbad Project, the largest seawater desalination plant in the western hemisphere.
The Sorek facility, jointly built with Hutchison Water International Holdings Pte. Ltd., is the world's largest and most advanced seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant. IDE says that the award recognizes the plant as the most impressive technical and ecologically sustainable achievement in the industry.
The Sorek plant provides clean water for more than 1.5 million people, or 20% of Israel's municipal water demand. "In a revolutionary departure from other large-scale SWRO facilities, the Sorek plant employs 16-inch membranes in a vertical arrangement. This innovation reduces the number of elements, pressure vessels and piping headers required [and] allows fast installation and increased accessibility," states Global Water Intelligence . "Smart design and construction within the boundaries of a uniquely challenging site footprint has enabled the plant to be environmentally sensitive, despite its gargantuan size, with no shoreline impacts due to underground pipe-jacking technique."
IDE completed the 150-million cubic meter a year Sorek plant in 2013, as well as a 70-million cubic meter a year plant at the Tianjin SDIC power station in China, and a 21.9-million cubic meter a year plant at the Vasilikos power plant in Cyprus. It has also begun construction of 74.6 million cubic meter a year Carlsbad plant in San Diego, under a 30-year BOT contract. In addition, Reliance Industries Ltd. chose IDE's SWRO solution to expand India's largest desalination plant, and Mulpha Australia selected the IDE ProGreen chemical-free, modular RO 'plant in a box' to provide high-quality clean water to its Hayman Island resort. The company has strategic partnership with Beijing Enterprises Group and set up a research partnership Clean Harbors to increase the reliability of Mechanical Vapor Compression (MVC) evaporators to treat oil sands produced water in Canada.