Sultanate of Oman - Veolia & QT deploy a desalination system with remote management technology during the global pandemic of COVID-19
Tiwi and Qalhat are among the best destinations for adventure and expedition in the Sultanate of Oman. However, the two regions suffer from acute water scarcity, which represents a serious obstacle to development. In 2019, QT Group was entrusted by Veolia Group's Oman branch to provide containerised desalination solutions.
Mr. Mahendran SENAPATHY, the O&M Manager of Veolia Group's Oman branch said: “These QT systems are not only reliable in terms of performance, but the project was delivered on-time with high quality after-sales services.” Mr. Mahendran SENAPATHY added "QT’s fastRO® C seawater desalination system is fully integrated in standard containers which has helped us to significantly reduce civil engineering costs. The smart remote monitoring system also gave us both surprise and delight in this context of the coronavirus pandemic!".
18 of October 2019, QT was awarded a contract for the conception of 4 fastRO® C series containerized seawater desalination units. The manufacturing lasted less than 2 months, and by the 3rd of January 2020, the 4 units were tested in QT's factory in Suzhou, and underwent a quality control by the customer before shipping to the project sites in Tiwi and Qalhat.
Liu Jianhui, the QT project manager responsible for this project, said: "This project is composed of 4 sets of fastRO® C series 350m3/d desalination containers and 2 sets of 864m3 fiberglass water tanks. Each standard container is fully equipped in the factory in China with pumps, membranes, valves, instruments, etc. Once at the project sites, we only needed to connect to the main water inlet pipe, water production pipe, discharge pipe and the installation was done effectively and in a very short amount of time. Since the glass fiber reinforced plastic water tanks are made of several 1x1 meters of standard glass steel cubes, it was very convenient to charge in the desalination containers.
At the beginning of 2020, with the spread of the coronavirus pandemic across the world, Oman and other Middle Eastern countries were not spared. In order to effectively control the development of the epidemic, the Oman government suspended all international and domestic flights from the end of March. in addition, a strict control the entry and exit of personnel was imposed.
Mr Mahendran said "This epidemic caught us off guard. Several desalination systems have arrived at the project site, but QT's technicians were unable to arrive at the site to complete the assembly and operation tests. We really felt there was nothing to do. Fortunately, QT had installed the remote monitoring function within the 4 units. After granting access to our Chinese suppliers, the technicians remotely monitored various data of the system and guided our local technicians to assemble and debug the system."
Liu Jianhui introduced “Considering the uncontrollability of the working environment where the desalination system is located, each set of our fastRO® C series container equipment is equipped with a remote monitoring function that uses 4G signals for data exchange. Overseas systems can be connected online to view and control the operating conditions and parameters of core equipment (such as alarms, high and low voltage protection, electricity, water production, data curves, etc.), so as to effectively grasp the operating conditions of equipment and systems, and address the problems that may occur giving advices and suggestions to our partners, which not only solved the problem in a timely manner, but also saved manpower and material resources."
Veolia Group is a world leading enterprise in the field of water, waste and energy management, with operations in five continents; QT Group, with its rich experience in the water treatment industry and its global business capabilities, is committed to participating in solving global water shortages problems. The seawater desalination project in the Tiwi and Qalhat regions is the first cooperation between the two companies in the Middle East. It is also expected that the successful implementation of this project will open up broader cooperation opportunities for both parties and continuously achieve a win-win situation in the global water treatment field.