Cannon Artes is currently building a large-scale, advanced wastewater treatment and water reuse plant for a gigantic polyolefin complex in Qatar, which will recover and reuse nearly 80 per cent of the effluent water.

The facility will cater to the water recovery needs of the plant, which is one of the top three petrochemical complexes in the Middle East. It will treat up to 25,000 cu m a day of effluent water and cooling-tower blowdown water. With a recovery capacity of 780 cu m per hour, the facility is set up to minimise the discharge rate, adopting a ‘Near-Zero-Liquid-Discharge’ philosophy, which  greatly exceeds regulatory requirements.

“Cannon Artes was chosen as the supplier of choice earlier this year, due to our proven ability to deliver large-scale and complex industrial wastewater treatment solutions that meet the highest environmental and efficiency standards,” says Alessio Liati, Sales Director at Cannon Artes. “To give an idea of the project’s scale, the water treatment plant alone spans an area comparable to three football fields, with more than 1,600 reverse osmosis membranes, 360 ultrafiltration modules, and over 17,000 sq m of active Membrane BioReactor (MBR) membrane surface”.

The wastewater treatment and reuse plant facility is part of a nearly $2 billion project focused on building a new polyethylene plant featuring two polymerisation units, with an overall capacity approaching 2 million tons per year.

Utilising the most advanced membrane technologies, the plant manages two types of wastewater discharges: industrial effluents undergo biological treatment using Cannon Artes’ proprietary EmbioArt MBR while cooling water blowdown is treated and reused with ultrafiltration (UF) and reverse osmosis (RO) technologies. The total treatment capacity approaches 1,000 cu m per hour.

The scope also includes a 600-cu-m-per-hour remineralisation plant designed to increase pH and reduce recovered water corrosivity. Equipped with six advanced calcite filters, this facility raises the bar for industrial remineralisation technology.

All plant components are fully customised to fit the client’s specifications, including advanced technologies such as EmbioArt MBR, UF, and RO, and ensuring the highest efficient and environmentally sustainable water-reuse solutions currently available on the market.

Construction of the project began in August, with infrastructure expected to be completed by early 2025. Full mechanical completion is scheduled for Q4 2025.