Aqualia will build and manage the wastewater treatment plant of the largest petrochemical industrial estate in the south of Europe, in Tarragona

The management company of the water networks of the chemical industries of Tarragona, AITASA, has granted Aqualia the design, construction, exploitation and maintenance of a joint effluent treatment plant for the chemical industries of Tarragona, in the largest chemical and petrochemical industrial estate in southern Europe. The total amount of the contract is 40 million euros.

As the president of AITASA, Manu Segura, has explained, the companies on the industrial estate have joined forces to manage and treat their waste jointly "to optimise resources and carry out more efficient treatment, under sustainability parameters, and to comply with the new European regulations, which are more demanding in the treatment of these types of industrial waste".

Aqualia's Zone II Director, Juan Luis Castillo, has explained that "to design and project the plant, we have set as a main objective to maximize the performance of pollutant removal and the quality of the water that is returned to the environment. Other basic goals have been to obtain an easy and efficient exploitation, with the maximum conditions of security and reliability and minimizing the environmental and urban impact. In addition, we have used the technical improvements available”.

Castillo has also explained that with the integrated treatment of industrial discharges, resources are optimised and work is done more efficiently, “although the technical complexity of the joint treatment is multiplied, so that the design is one of the most complex and complete possible”. For this reason, in order to define and assess the project, 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 Repsol in the southern petrochemical industrial estate of Tarragona, the largest in the south of Europe, and will have a capacity of 1,800,000 litres/hour during 24 hours, with the possibility of future extensions. The waste water will arrive through two collectors, one coming from the north polygon and the other from the south polygon.

Aqualia has achieved the project after competing with the main companies in the sector. The budget for the work is 25 million euros, plus 15 million euros for the 5 years of operation and maintenance. Once the preliminary work has been completed, the construction will begin this June and will remain in progress for 17 months.

AITASA is a public limited company formed by the chemical companies of the Tarragona industrial area, such as Ercros, Basf, Repsol, Cepsa, Dow Chemical, and Shell, among others. Its main objective is to supply industrial water to these companies, through its own 43.5 km distribution network, which manages a volume of water of more than 10 million cubic hectometres per year.

Pies de foto:

Photo 1: In the image, Daniel Montserrat (left), CEO of AITASA and Juan Luis Castillo (right), Aqualia's Zone II Director, during the signing of the contract.

Photo 2: panoramic view of the facilities at the petrochemical industrial estate in Tarragona.