In late April 2016 a group of 18 engineers attended the site tour of the Adelaide Desalination Plant at Lonsdale in South Australia. The purpose of this technical tour was to provide the group with insight to this project and its geographical positioning along with the environmental protection measures that make this plant unique in both design and construction.
The tour began in the Kauwi Interpretive Centre, providing a brief summary of the project history and the overall function of the plant. Next activity was the actual visit to the plant, starting at the intake and the outfall ‘shaft’ buildings, where sea water is pumped into and discharged out of the plant respectively.
The tour continued examining operational process where the plant utilises a 3 stage pre-treatment process including ultrafiltration membranes to remove particulates from the raw seawater, followed by a two pass reverse osmosis system to remove the majority of the dissolved salts. A post-treatment process where addition of CO2, lime, chlorine and fluorine is added to ‘pure water’ ensures water leaving the plant is ready to drink and this water is transported approximately 14km to the Treated Water Storage Tanks at Happy Valley from where it is distributed to the Adelaide water network.
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