Desalination set to expand

Desalination plants could supply up to 45 per cent of Perth’s drinking water by the year 2015, Water Corporation chief executive Jim Gill has predicted.

Mr Gill was speaking last week at a function to mark the one-year anniversary of the Kwinana desalination plant, which supplies 17 per cent of Perth’s drinking water.

His comments came in the same week that federal Labor pledged to invest $20 million in a national centre of excellence for water desalination in Perth.

Labor leader Kevin Rudd said the centre of excellence would research ways to most efficiently use desalination technology to address the challenge of climate change.

Mr Gill believes the Kwinana plant, which opened in November 2006, was a significant development on a global scale.

“This has been a breakthrough because it’s really the first big desal applied to a mainland water supply. Now its taking off all over Australia and I think we will see more of it in the US too, because they are looking at what we are doing here,” Mr Gill said.

“Before Kwinana, desal of this capacity only existing in the Middle East and on islands like Trinidad and Singapore.”

The developer and operator of the Kwinana plant, French company Degremont, hailed it as a major success.

“The plant has met its production targets, its water quality targets and environmental protection targets as well, so it’s a real success in such a short time frame,” Degremont managing director in Australia Marc Simon said.

Degremont has built 260 desalination plants around the world and is keen to build additional plants in Australia.

With most states committed to building desalination plants, Mr Simon said that, by 2015, desalination could account for one-third of the drinking water supply in Australia

“If you look at all the projects, it is growing very fast,” he said.

“We do intend to play a significant role in bidding and delivering these projects, from design to construct and operate in the long term. We are geared towards long term partnerships.”

Mr Gill said WA’s second desalination plant, to be built north of Bunbury, would initially have a capacity of 50 billion litres per year but would be designed so that output could be doubled.

“We expect the new plant to be up and running in 2011 and within three or four years of that we would expect to need the extra capacity, but it all depends on what the weather does,” Mr Gill said.

At full output, desal would supply “between 40 and 45 per cent of water by 2015”.

Mr Gill added that dams would be responsible for only a quarter of Perth’s water supply, whereas 30 years ago they were the sole source of drinking water. The balance would be supplied by groundwater.