Somos FCC - Nº14

water From left to right, Daniel Montserrat, director of AITASA, and Juan Luis Castillo, director of Zone II of Aqualia, during the signing of the contract. AITASA, the company that mana- ges the water networks of the che- mical industries of Tarragona, has awarded Aqualia the design, cons- truction, operation and mainte- nance of a joint effluent treatment plant for the chemical industries of Tarragona, in the largest chemical and petrochemical complex in sou- thern Europe. The total contract value is 40 million euros. As the President of AITASA, Manu Segura, explained, the companies at the complex site have joined forces to jointly manage and treat their effluents “to optimise resour - ces and carry out more efficient treatment, under sustainability pa- rameters, and to comply with the new European regulations, which are more demanding in the treat- ment of these types of industrial effluents”. According to Aqualia’s Zone II Di- rector, Juan Luis Castillo, “our key goal in the plant design and project is to maximise the performance of pollutant elimination processes and to ensure the quality of the water returned to the environment. Other basic objectives is to have easier and more efficient opera - tions, with maximum safety and reliability conditions and to mini- mise the environmental and urban impact. In addition, we have used the best available techniques”. Optimization of resources and efficiency Castillo also explained that with the integrated treatment of indus- trial discharges, resources are optimised and work is done more efficiently, “although the technical complexity of the joint treatment is multiplied, and accordingly, the design is one of the most complex and complete”. Therefore, , in or - der to define and evaluate the pro - ject, last year Aqualia started up an industrial-scale pilot plant on site, which can be fully extrapolated to the future full-scale treatment plant. The new effluent treatment plant will be built on land ceded by Rep- sol in the southern petrochemical industrial complex of Tarragona, the largest in southern Europe. It will have a capacity of 1,800,000 li- tres per hour during 24 hours, with the possibility of future extensions. The total amount of the contract is 40 million euros nies operating at the Tarragona in- dustrial site, including Ercros, Basf, Repsol, Cepsa, Dow Chemical and Shell. Its key objective is to provi- de industrial water to these compa- nies through its own 43.5 kilometre distribution network that manages a volume of more than 10 million cubic hectometres per year. The wastewater will arrive via two collectors, one from the northern and the other one from the sou- thern part of the industrial complex. Aqualia was awarded the project after competing with the leading companies in this sector. The bu- dget for the project is 25 million euros, plus another 15 million eu- ros for the five years of operations. Once the preliminary work is com- pleted, work on the project, expec- ted to last 17 months, will begin in June. AITASA is a limited company com- prising several chemical compa- B U S I N E S S 29 B U S I N E S S