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Tuesday, 26 April 2011 06:05

Thames Water starts up desalination plant

Thames Water has started up its desalination plant at Beckton in East London.

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph on Friday, the company said it was not a sign of any impending water shortages and that it was currently running the plant as a test.

Water UK, the organisation which represents UK water and wastewater treatment companies, said that despite the very dry early spring, the water companies did not envisage that they would have to impose water restrictions this summer.
Plans for the plant were originally rejected by Ken Livingston Former Lord Mayor of London on the grounds of its energy requirements – the desalination process uses as much as twice the energy per quart as conventional water purification treatment.

The Thames Gateway Water Treatment Works, Britain's first desalination plant, is capable of supplying 150 million litres of water per day - enough to supply about one million people or 400,000 households. The works will take water from the tidal Thames when required and use desalination to remove the salt, producing high-quality drinking water.

Thames Water spokesman Simon Evans said:

"We began using the desalination plant at one-sixth output on March 30, not because we need to but as part of the fine-tuning of the works and the training of its operators, and we have been using it intermittently since then."

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