Dubai JAFZA Water Utility

GHD plays a leading role in securing Dubai’s current and future water requirements.

Our team in the Middle East has completed preliminary engineering work on the Jebel Ali Free Zone (JAFZA) Utility project to provide water infrastructure to an area of 8500ha that includes the JAFZA Free Trade Zone, Technopark and downtown Jebel Ali. These precincts comprise both greenfield and existing development with industrial, commercial and residential land uses.

A new special purpose vehicle company which will be jointly owned by Palm Water and GE Finance is in the process of securing the concession rights to construct, finance, own and maintain the water cycle infrastructure for the entire development area.

The project's assets include:

• A 100Ml/d seawater RO desalination plant
• Twin marine intakes and a concentrate return outfall
• Water supply distribution and sewage collection networks to approximately 8500ha of trade development area
• A 108Ml/d membrane bioreactor (MBR) sewerage treatment plant and emergency outfall
• A 4ML/d industrial wastewater pretreatment plant (feeding wastes into the MBR)
• MBR effluent supply mains to reservoirs for irrigation use
• An 81Ml/d  reverse osmosis polishing plant to treat effluent from the MBR for district cooling use
• Eight polished effluent transmission mains to district cooling plants for use as make-up water. The cooling water blowdown is returned to the irrigation system.

According to Nick Walmsley, Project Manager, “This extensive project features a number of individual assets, which in usual circumstances would be implemented as separate items. In this instance, this challenging undertaking will be implemented as a consolidated project, which allows us to showcase the full scope of services that our water teams can deliver.”

The project is being delivered under an engineering, procurement, construction (EPC) contract that includes key performance indicators for short-term operations. As the nominated process subcontractor, GE Water Process Technologies, which also delivered the preliminary process plant designs, will enter into a separate long-term operations and maintenance contract with the project company once the performance of the constructed works is proven.