Chengda selects Veolia to supply key process technologies at major chemical plant in Saudi Arabia

Veolia Water Technologies will deliver a thermal concentration system to purify calcium chloride.

China Chengda Engineering Co. Ltd. (Chengda) awarded Veolia a contract to supply evaporation technologies for Khair Inorganic Chemical Industries Co. in Ras Al Khair, an emerging industrial city located in the Eastern Province of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Chengda, a leading Chinese engineering and design firm based in Sichuan province, was engaged by Khair’s Inorganic Chemical Industries Company, also known as InoChem, to help develop a major facility designed to process a feedstock of salt and limestone to produce 300,000 tons of soda ash and 300,000 tons of calcium chloride per year.

This will enable the substitution of imports in myriad applications from glass making to oil drilling and will make InoChem the first manufacturer of soda ash in the Gulf region and the largest producer of calcium chloride in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Veolia’s HPD® evaporation system, which is designed to be integrated with other equipment into InoChem’s overall production facility, will concentrate and purify the brine stream to produce a calcium chloride solution. A portion of this concentrated brine, which has mostly been depleted of sodium chloride, will be further concentrated in a secondary process utilizing a two-effect finishing evaporation system to produce high-quality flaked and calcined calcium chloride products along with a high-purity sodium chloride byproduct which can be recycled within the plant.

Veolia’s process design expertise and track record with HPD® evaporation and crystallization technologies help chemical producers optimize their operations by achieving high-purity outputs while improving environmental performance with a focus on the recycling of liquid streams and the recovery of valuable resources.