Advanced Water Treatment Technology Selected for Thailand Power Plant

GE’s (USA) advanced water treatment technology will help purify water at IRPC Public Company Limited’s new combined heat and power (CHP) plant in Rayong, Thailand. GE's ZeeWeed 1500 ultrafiltration membranes, reverse osmosis (RO) and electrodeionization (EDI) technologies will be used to make high-quality demineralised water for boiler feed water and to reduce the use of chemicals.

GE will provide the technology to Toyo Thai Company Limited, which is the engineering, procurement and construction contractor on the project.

IRPC is one of the leading integrated petrochemical companies in Thailand, and its CHP plants serve petroleum and petrochemical plants at its industrial park in Rayong Province, located about 200 kilometers east of Bangkok. Its newest plant, CHP II, will use GE pressurised hollow-fiber ultrafiltration membranes, EDI and a customised RO system to reduce chemical consumption by approximately 99 percent compared to conventional ion exchange technology.

“GE’s all-encompassing water treatment technology was the right solution for our CHP II plant. We chose GE’s equipment due to its reliability of operation as well as it being less chemically intensive. The unique mix of ultrafiltration, RO and EDI will provide us with the highest reliability and quality of demineralised water for our boilers,” said Suksawat Athipunyapun, CHP II project manager, IRPC Public Company Limited.

Once completed, CHP II will have a capacity to treat 315 m3/hour of water, which will be the largest capacity of ultrafiltration, RO and EDI in Thailand. The facility is expected to begin commercial operation in October 2014.

“We were able to offer the right combination of equipment and technology to meet IRPC Public Company Limited’s needs for its newest power plant, which included us customizing a package of RO, ultrafiltration membranes and EDI. At GE, we pride ourselves with the ability to work with a wide variety of customers to find the solutions for their ever-changing water requirements,” said Yuvbir Singh, general manager, engineered systems—water and process technologies for GE Power & Water.