Qingdao seawater desalination

A seawater desalination company in Qingdao was established on January 23, 2009. Initially founded as a Sino-Spanish joint venture, it is now a wholly state-owned enterprise under the Qingdao Water Affairs Group, specializing in seawater desalination. The company’s designed daily production capacity reaches 100,000 cubic meters, and its cumulative water supply has exceeded 120 million cubic meters. Desalinated water accounts for 10% of the water supply in Qingdao’s urban area, and the produced water meets the national drinking water standards. Through technological breakthroughs, the cost of water production has been reduced to approximately 5 yuan per cubic meter. The plant boasts a high degree of automation, requiring only three operators to run the entire facility. After the Spanish partner withdrew its investment in 2014, the company became fully state-owned. Its maximum daily production capacity has reached 105,000 cubic meters. The second-phase project, launched in 2021, has achieved a localization rate of 76% for its equipment and received special central government funding. As a result, energy consumption in the project has decreased by 5%, and chemical consumption has been reduced by 10%. During the same period, the company won the bid for a seawater desalination project in Egypt and was shortlisted as a “Best Seawater Desalination Project” at the Global Water Summit. In 2023, the company signed an agreement for the world’s first seawater lithium extraction project, with an annual output of 40 tons of lithium carbonate. At the same time, the company was integrated into Qingdao’s unified water resource allocation system, making it China’s largest membrane-based seawater desalination project. The company plans to achieve a daily production capacity of 500,000 cubic meters by 2025. The reverse osmosis membrane elements replaced this time were part of the secondary No. 4 reverse osmosis membrane stack system, which was completed in September 2025. A total of 140 Haitong reverse osmosis membrane elements were used in the project, and their performance has been excellent, leaving the customer highly satisfied.

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