Intérêt accru pour le dessalement

Increased interest in desalination

During the meeting of the Council of Ministers that he chaired the day before yesterday, Monday, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune once again insisted on the construction of seawater desalination plants, emphasizing the need to accelerate the pace for their completion. President Tebboune ordered the exploitation of major projects currently being carried out to integrate Algerian skills, particularly young people. It is known that new training courses related to the desalination of seawater and saline water in the desert have been launched in higher education in accordance with the decisions of the Council of Ministers of November 14, 2022.

The objective is to train Algerian executives who master the processes of producing drinking water from seawater and reducing the salinity rate of groundwater in the Saharan regions. The President of the Republic also insisted, during the Council of Ministers held this Monday, on the imperative of “encouraging local manufacturers of equipment, materials, mechanical parts and spare parts making up seawater desalination plants” and “making more progress in this specialty in order to better master its techniques and equipment”. On this issue of integration, the DG of the AEC said that civil engineering and pipes as well as electrical wiring make it possible to reach 30% to 40%; there remain the pumps and reverse osmosis membranes which are imported. It is a question, he added, of securing the operation of the installations, which poses the problem of imported inputs.

On this subject, the Director General of Algerian Energy Company (AEC), which is responsible for the construction of desalination plants, recently revealed that the reverse osmosis membranes that constitute the heart of the operation of the seawater desalination plant, could be produced 100% in Algeria. The same approach for filters is envisaged. Pumps could also be produced in Algeria. Maintenance must also be Algerian. In the Council of Ministers, the President of the Republic instructed the Government to create a large company responsible for supervising and managing all the plants built along the coast. Regarding the supply of drinking water, President Tebboune ordered the granting of permits for the drilling of wells in regions facing a shortage of water resources, emphasizing the need to act according to a proactive vision in all regions that suffer from a shortage of water resources, while working, in parallel, to interconnect dams on a national scale.
THERE