ACCIONA has been selected by the Water Supplies Department (WSD) - the entity that manages drinking water supplies in Hong Kong - to carry out the design and commissioning of a digital twin in the Tseung Kwan O desalination plant.
This award represents a milestone in the desalination industry and makes ACCIONA a pioneer in the implementation of this type of system in the water sector, as it is the first digital twin that covers all the stages of the desalination process.
It represents progress on several fronts, as it forecasts the evolution of production processes, optimizes costs by anticipating what happens in processes, detects membranes fouling in real time and optimizes energy consumption, among other advantages. These factors are key elements in improving efficiency in the operation and maintenance of the plant.
Together with its partners Jardine Engineering Corporation Limited and China State Construction Engineering Corporation, ACCIONA has been awarded the design, construction, operation and maintenance of the Tseung Kwan O desalination plant for 15 years. The plant entered service a few months ago and has a current capacity of 135,000 m3/día, equivalent to the water consumption of 850,000 people.
The objective behind the implementation of the digital twin is to provide greater security in the quality and continuity of drinking water supplies to the people of Hong Kong.
ACCIONA has extensive experience in the development of tools to recreate isolated parts of the processes of a desalination plant, such as the osmosis membrane cleaning simulator at the Fouka plant (Algeria), the prediction of the Langelier Index in mining pipelines in the Copiapó desalination plant (Chile), the prediction of Boron value in the permeate water from RO systems at the Ras Abu Fontas RAF-A3 desalination plant (Qatar) or the remote start-up of the Al-Khobar plant (Saudi Arabia) during COVID-19 travel restrictions. The implementation of these systems helps the company’s decision-making processes and also aims at the future integration of all the data from its plants, starting from the design phase.
