Azerbaijan, Baku, 11 April / Trend, A. Akhundov /
Dow Water & Process Solutions, a business unit of The Dow Chemical Company, as well as the Hidro-Lotus company, a joint venture between Azeri Hidro Group and Turkish Lotus Group, began construction of the water treatment plant on the Jeyranbatan Lake in Baku. The project customer is a national water operator of Azerbaijan - Azersu JSC.
This was told on Thursday by Dow Chemical Director for Turkey, the South Caucasus and Central Asia Ihsan Necipoglu.
The facility is the world's largest plant for the production of drinking water from surface sources through the use of the ultrafiltration system. The plant will be operational by the end of the third quarter of this year. The source of drinking water will be the surface water of the lake Jeyranbatan.
Power plant capacities will allow the clearing of 520,000 cubic meters of water per day. According Necipoglu, the plant will be built with perspective of increasing its capacity by 20 percent in the future. The new and currently existing water-purification units will operate in parallel.
"The plant's capacity will allow providing treated drinking water to 1.5 million people, that is, half the population of Baku," Necipoglu said.
Construction of the plant with consideration of the cost of laying pipes will amount to $1 billion of investment.
The DOW Ultrafiltration IntegraPac ™ ultrafiltration units and modules will be used in undertaking the project. Those are ready-to-install systems which will reduce the capital and operating costs and increase the pace of construction works, what is necessary to meet the schedule of accelerated construction of the plant.
According to him, the company might also take part in new projects in Azerbaijan.
"We are in talks with Azersu for new projects, and may build such settings in Mingachevir and Lankaran. Our activities in Azerbaijan are not limited to cleaning the water, we are also working with service companies involved in oil and gas projects," Necipoglu said.
Dow Chemical Company is an American chemical company, the second in the world in terms of sales after BASF. Dow's diversified industry-leading portfolio of specialty chemical, advanced materials, agro-sciences and plastics businesses delivers a broad range of technology-based products and solutions to customers in approximately 160 countries and in high growth sectors such as electronics, water, energy, coatings and agriculture. In 2012,
Dow had annual sales of approximately $57 billion and employed approximately 54,000 people worldwide.