View Technical Program - Levant Desalination Association

PROPER WATER TREATMENT SOLUTIONS GIVES CONCRETE
RESULTS IN CEMENT INDUSTRY
Samir Fayyad
Vice President, Technical – AES Arabia – Saudi Arabia
REF# IDA_DM2010-Fayyad
ABSTRACT
Lafarge has constructed the first private Greenfield cement plant in Aleppo - Syria
with a production capacity of 2.75 million tons per annum. The water requirement
for the cement plant’s power plant is around 5,500 cubic meters per day (CMD) and is
supplied from a single deep well groundwater source. The groundwater, which had
extremely high Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) and Total Suspended Solids (TSS), had
to be conditioned to make it suitable for use as Cooling Tower (CT) makeup and in
other processes. Environmental standards and limited water supplies necessitated
a solution that would exploit the use of available resources, including treatment of
existing process waste streams within the plant.
In response to the client’s tough requirements, AES presented a technical solution
that maximized overall plant recovery to more than 90% while keeping operational
and chemical consumption costs to a minimum. Lime softening followed by high
recovery Reverse Osmosis (RO) ensured water conservation, while the design was
tailored to allow RO reject water to be utilized within the cement manufacturing
process. The plant included a provision to allow for the sludge from the lime
softening process to be decanted and returned back to feed, maximizing recovery
and making the treatment process a true Zero Liquid Waste solution – a land mark in
the region. The plant has been successfully built and commissioned in record time of
4 months.
Water Reuse and Desalination: Experience and Opportunity
TECHNICAL PROGRAM 45