Case Studies

Wastewater Infrastructure – A necessity to bolster sustainable growth in GCC

In recent years, Bahrain has proved itself to be a front runner in the quest for development not only in the Middle East but the entire globe. Considered one of the best places to reside in the world, it is home to a plethora of developmental projects. The spectacular water front of Bay of Bahrain , the modern city of Diyar-Al-Muharraq or the Bahrain monorail are only some of the manifestations of a nation growing rapidly. With the major chunk of its GDP arising from the services sector, Bahrain is an important economic hub in the GCC which characterises itself with high ease of doing business and a welcoming immigration policy.

This favorable business and social environment attracts people from all across the globe. In addition to the immigrants, Bahrain’s own population is close to 1.3 million housed in an area of 710 sq. kms. This denotes one of the highest population density rates in the world, projected to grow at a rate of 4.6% annually.

Effectively sustaining this population while maintaining their quality of life makes efficient water management the need of the hour. Water management includes not only water treatment for one time consumption but a holistic approach including provision of necessary treatment of the resulting wastewater. This approach should also be augmented with a provision of water recycling to round off the water cycle.

This utopian idea of holistic wastewater management is being put to implementation at Bahrain in the form of the 40,000 m3 per day WWTP of Madinat Salman.

The Madinat Salman Plant: A Technological Marvel

The Engineering, Procurement & Construction of the plant was awarded to VA Tech Wabag in collaboration with Belhasa projects. The scope of the order award also includes 5 years of O&M.

The site is built on 13 islands of reclaimed land which accounts to 750 hectares of total plant area.

21 m deep terminal lift pumping station:

The process scheme begins with the inlet chamber and an 85,000 m3 per day terminal lift pumping station which sits at a depth of 21 metres. The water from the deep sewage gravity network is pumped through this depth with the help of a dry well pump.

Efficient Reuse & Resource Recovery

The heart of the plant is the tertiary treatment which renders it further purity through disc filters and disinfection using chlorination. The plant runs on the philosophy of resource recovery for the environment to the maximum extent. The collected sewage is digested, thermally dried and bagged through an automatic bagging plant for sale to farmers as manure.

WABAG- Setting new standards in execution

Executing this project was a huge challenge as it was situated on reclaimed land surrounded by sea from 3 sides and a hill in the middle which proved to be a bottle neck for construction.

The project stands out as a structural marvel with 25,000 cubic meters of concreting and reinforcement of over 7,000 MT of steel. The 85,000 m3 per day deep terminal lift pumping station sits over 160 piles carefully inserted over an unstable surface which housed an aquifer below it.

The 4.5 km long outfall pipeline which rounds off the plant process involved both onshore and offshore HDPE piping of 1200 mm diameter. The offshore piping involved plastic welding of numerous sections of length 1.5 resulting in two huge portions of 750 meters each. Both these portions were tugged to the ocean and systematically sunk into trenches made using specialized sea water dredging machines.

Despite all these challenges, no compromise was made on safety and quality. With an eye for customer satisfaction, Wabag overcame these challenges and completed the project on time, clocking a total of 3.5 million safe man hours. Wabag was also commended for the hydro-testing and commissioning which was successfully completed in the first go itself.

Effect on people’s lives and the future of Reuse

The project touches the lives of almost 100,000 civilians as it promotes water sustainability with a potential to reclaim water from sewage at the city of Madinat Salman in the rapidly growing kingdom of Bahrain. The plant is a showcase model and proposes a fitting solution to the wastewater treatment needs of not only Bahrain but the entire GCC region as such.