First Seawater Desalination Mega-Project in West Africa

inge GmbH, a specialist global provider of ultrafiltration technology, secured a major contract in Spain for realising a large-scale desalination project in Ghana. The prestigious Spanish plant constructor Abeinsa EPC has been commissioned by Ghana's state-run Ghana Water Company Ltd. (GWCL) to build a seawater desalination plant producing drinking water for Ghana's capital Accra and the surrounding areas. Following a complex selection procedure, Abeinsa picked inge as its preferred project partner to equip the plant with a total of 10 ultrafiltration lines as a pretreatment stage for reverse osmosis. inge is offering an extended package for this project also including the complete central header pipe and valve units provided in collaboration with the subcontractor Bauer Water GmbH.

Drinking water is a scarce resource in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) which extends outwards from Ghana's capital city. To address this problem, the government has awarded a contract to build an ultra-modern seawater desalination plant featuring reverse osmosis in Nungua Township, some 12 kilometers from Accra. The plant is designed to produce 60,000 cubic meters of drinking water per day for approximately 500,000 people in the Teshie-Nungua region. To ensure the seawater desalination plant is supplied with pre-cleaned water of consistently high quality, the Spanish plant constructor Abeinsa EPC decided to use inge ultrafiltration technology.

The project is a build–operate–transfer (BOT) arrangement with a concession of 25 years. During this period, the company Befesa Desalination Developments Ghana Ltd. will operate the facility on behalf of Ghana's public water utility GWCL, which will be responsible for supplying the water to consumers. At the end of the concession period, the ownership of the plant will be transferred to the public water utility – one of the key reasons why the client has insisted on top-quality UF technology, consulting and engineering services. The client specifically requested an expanded package of services from inge for this project:

"For this major project, inge will not only provide its high-performance, pressure-optimised ultrafiltration racks with their patented Multibore membrane fibres, but also an expanded package including the central header pipe and valve units for the ten UF lines, furthermore including the support for the planning and installation stages. By offering this comprehensive, top-quality package, we successfully convinced the client that we are the best partner," says inge CEO Bruno Steis. "We truly stood out as a turnkey supplier of complete ultrafiltration systems for large-scale plants." The ultrafiltration lines will feature more than 1,400 dizzer XL modules, and the complete UF system is designed to supply 135,000 cubic meters per day of pre-filtered water to the reverse osmosis stage. The modules and rack components will be delivered to Ghana by mid-year and installed by year's end. The seawater desalination plant is scheduled to start operation in early 2014. "We are proud that we've been awarded a contract for a project where the client sets such high standards for product quality, package scope and engineering services," says Ralf Krüger, the sales manager who is responsible for the project, summing up an undeniable success story for inge.