Thames Water Desalination Plant

Thames Water Desalination Plant

The first water desalination plant in the United Kingdom, the Thames Water Desalination Plant,[1], or Beckton Desalination Plant, has been built in Beckton, east London for Thames Water by Acciona Agua and was opened by HRH Duke of Edinburgh on 2 June 2010. It is the first plant of its kind to be built in the UK and will provide up to 150 million litres of drinking water each day – enough for nearly one million people – making the prospect of future water restrictions less likely.[2][3]

Contents

Background

Much of Thames Water's supply area is classed by the Environment Agency as 'seriously water stressed', with customers in London, Swindon and Oxford particularly at risk of water restrictions during extended periods of dry weather.

Building a new treatment plant that treats water from the brackish waters of the River Thames, turning into clean, fresh drinking water, will help reduce the risk of water restrictions and ensure that severe water rationing is never required.[4]

The plant will be used to convert brackish water from the River Thames into clean drinking water during times of drought or extended periods of low rainfall, or to maintain supplies in the event of an incident at other water treatment facilities.

Architects Broadway Malyan designed the plan to RIBA Stage D and acted as expert witness at public enquiry.

Facts and figures

  • The plant will produce 150 million litres of water a day, enough to supply 400,000 households or 900,000 people.
  • The plant will run on 100 percent renewable energy.
  • The plant will take water from the tidal Thames during the last three hours of the ebb tide and remove the salt using a reverse osmosis process.
  • The plant will mainly be used in times of drought or to support existing supplies if needed.
  • The treated water will be transferred from Beckton (East London) to North East London in a new pipeline, 14 km long. The pipeline can hold 14 million litres of water and has a diameter of 1.2 metres.
  • The total cost of the scheme, including the pipeline, will cost £250 million.
  • The route of the pipe has been chosen to avoid residential areas and cause minimum disturbance.
  • All construction sites will be environmentally screened and all areas returned to their original condition on completion of the work.[5]

Criticism

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone criticised the plant in 2007, calling it a "misguided and a retrograde step in UK environmental policy." Livingstone, arguing that the plant was expensive and unnecessary, said that Thames Water should instead focus on reducing waste caused by leakage and that people should be encouraged "to use less water, not more."[6]

References



Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Thames Water — Type Private Industry Water supply and sewerage services Founded 1989 …   Wikipedia

  • Desalination — This article is about removing salt from water. For soil desalination, see Soil salinity control. Water desalination Methods Distillation Multi stage flash distillation (MSF) Multiple effect distillation (MED|ME) Vapor compression (VC) Ion… …   Wikipedia

  • Desalination in the United Kingdom — The first desalination plant in the United Kingdom, the Thames Water Desalination Plant, [ [http://www.water technology.net/projects/water desalination/ Thames Water Desalination Plant: water technology.net] ] is to be built in Beckton, East… …   Wikipedia

  • Metropolitan Water Board (London) — The Metropolitan Water Board s headquarters in Finsbury. Now residential. (November 2005) The Metropolitan Water Board was founded in 1903 to bring the nine private water companies supplying water to London under a single public body. The members …   Wikipedia

  • Water supply — is the process of self provision or provision by third parties of water of various qualities to different users. Irrigation is covered separately. Global access to waterIn 2004 about 3.5 billion people worldwide (54% of the global population) had …   Wikipedia

  • water purification — ▪ public health  treatment of water to make it safe and acceptable for human use. Such treatment grew vastly in importance in the 20th century because of the growth of cities and development of industry and, consequently, of pollution.       A… …   Universalium

  • Ken Livingstone — at t …   Wikipedia

  • Brackish water — (less commonly brack water) is water that has more salinity than fresh water, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing of seawater with fresh water, as in estuaries, or it may occur in brackish fossil aquifers. The word comes from… …   Wikipedia

  • Reclaimed water — Reclaimed water, sometimes called recycled water, is former wastewater (sewage) that has been treated to remove solids and certain impurities, and then allowed to recharge the aquifer rather than being discharged to surface water. This recharging …   Wikipedia

  • Metropolitan Board of Works — The Metropolitan Board of Works headquarters in Spring Gardens near Trafalgar Square were designed by Frederick Marrable in 1858. The Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) was the principal instrument of London wide government from 1855 until the… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”