Following an international call for tenders, Morocco's Office National de l'Electricité et de l'Eau Potable (ONEE) has selected a consortium made up of the Spanish company Abengoa and Atner, a Moroccan company, for the project to modernize and expand the capacity of the Tan-Tan brackish water desalination plant in the Guelmim-Oued Noun region.
The modernization of the Tan-Tan brackish water desalination plant can begin. Morocco’s Office national de l’électricité et de l’eau potable (ONEE) recently appointed a consortium to carry out the work. The consortium is made up of Abengoa, a company based in Seville, Spain, and Atner, a Moroccan company specializing in water and wastewater treatment.
The consortium has a budget of 79.1 million Moroccan dirhams (nearly 7.4 million euros) mobilized from the Saudi Development Fund (SDF) for the expansion of the desalination plant, which was commissioned in 2014. The reverse osmosis plant is equipped with a 0.4 m diameter raw water supply channel, two wells and three tanks with a capacity of 1,500 m3, 500 m3 and 250 m3 respectively. The facility also has two pumping stations and a 33 km long water injection channel.
Strengthening the water supply in Tan-Tan
Abengoa and Atner are planning, with funding from the SDF, to carry out a series of works at the desalination plant located in Sehb Lharcha. These are civil engineering works and equipment of boreholes, the laying of pipes to bring raw water from the boreholes or the equipment of pumping stations and recovery. The objective is to “increase the flow rate of the Tan-Tan plant from 0.05 m3 per second to a final flow rate of 0.15 m3 per second by the end of the project,” says Abengoa.
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The consortium has 18 months to deliver the upgraded desalination plant. The work is part of the Tan-Tan drinking water supply reinforcement project, led by ONEE. In Morocco, the public agency is implementing several other projects to improve drinking water coverage for Moroccans, including the Project to Strengthen Production and Improve the Technical and Commercial Performance of Drinking Water Systems (PRPTC) and the Project to Make Water Access Sustainable and Secure (PPSAE).
Inès Magoum
