2024
Arctic tundra emits more carbon than it absorbs, for the first time in millennia,
Source: 2024 NOAA Arctic Report Card
With desalination in Spain an important strategy amid ongoing water shortages partly linked to climate change, a plant in Torrevella—a Mediterranean coastal city in the country’s southeast—plans to increase its desalinated water production by 50%
The state water company Acuamed has awarded a contract of 93.9 million dollars this summer to a joint venture of Sacyr Water, Sacyr Construction, the water unit of Ferrovial Cadagua and Ferrovial Construction to expand the capacity of the plant to 120 cubic hectometres per year from its current 80 cubic hm per year. The contract also covers four years of operation and maintenance by the JV.
The work includes the construction of a 5,000 square meter warehouse with an electrical room that will house new reverse osmosis equipment and five new energy recovery racks and pressure exchanger isobaric chambers for energy capture of sea water.
Two seawater intake systems will be added which, along with increased pumping capacity, will double seawater collection and pumping. The current plant, built and operated by Acciona, is the largest in Europe, according to Sacyr. A contract was also awarded last month to a Sacyr-Ferrovial joint venture to expand and operate the Águilas desalination plant in the Murcia region.
The region served by the plant, which includes the province of Alicante, is “one of the areas with the most climatic variability and least availability of water resources in Spain”, but with an economy based on agriculture and tourism, he says Acuamed, which is responsible for the country’s hydraulic infrastructure. The water produced by the plant is divided between crop irrigation and supplementary supply for up to 1.6 million people.
