[ Duplex / Water ]
[ Duplex / Water ]
What’ s at stake The current year has highlighted both the climate crisis and the perils of ignoring it. The summer, one of the hottest and driest on record, was marked by devastating wildfires, while floods swept through Europe, Asia and the Americas. Water – or its absence – sits at the crossroads of these challenges. Scarcity threatens to make vast regions uninhabitable, while wildfires require abundant supplies to fight the flames. Meanwhile, sudden, intense rainfall underscores the need for smarter flood prevention and mitigation. Depending on the circumstances, water is both a problem and a solution.
Desalination Desalination, once considered a lastditch option, is now a vital tool against scarcity. Critics rightly point to its energy intensity and brine by-products, but technological advances are steadily making it more sustainable. Hong Kong’ s Tseung Kwan O desalination plant, commissioned
Bathing in the Seine in 2024, is a case in point. Built on reclaimed landfill, the site avoids disrupting new habitats while placing
Georges Seurat, Bathers at Asnieres( National Gallery, London) depicts bathers on the river Seine in a suburb of Paris.
Reverse osmosis system and nanofiltration membranes for water treatment. Photo: Dreamstime.
In 2025, Parisians and tourists were once again able to bathe in the river Seine, a privilege denied for nearly a century because of pollution from bacteria, industrial waste and sewage overflow. However, a massive clean-up was carried out in preparation for the Paris Olympics of 2024. A large underground storage tank, the Austerlitz basin, was installed to address the problem of flooding by capturing untreated sewage that accumulates during intense rainfall and redirecting it towards wastewater treatment centres. Wastewater treatment facilities throughout the region were also upgraded to modern standards. In 2025 SIAAP( Greater Paris Sanitation Authority) and Suez inaugurated a biogas production unit at the Seine Aval wastewater treatment plant. This facility recovers sludge and turns it into fertiliser and renewable energy.
production close to population centres and existing pipeline networks ensures efficient distribution. The plant uses ActiDAFF, a hybrid flotation – filtration system that adjusts energy use based on water quality: energy use is reduced when water impurities are low. Advanced reverse osmosis( RO) with energy recovery devices can reclaim up to 96 % of the brine’ s pressure energy, cutting pumping energy requirements by half. High-efficiency pumps and a 10 MW solar farm, along with over 1,800 rooftop solar panels, will further slash the plant’ s carbon footprint. Rainwater harvesting and greywater reuse are expected to halve freshwater consumption. Across the Middle East and North Africa, desalination plants are pushing capacity boundaries. The Shoaiba complex in Saudi Arabia holds the record for the world’ s largest water desalination capacity, at nearly 3 million cubic metres per day. Other mega-projects include the Ras Al Khair hybrid plant( Saudi Arabia), and Jebel Ali, Fujairah and Taweelah( all in UAE). These plants combine advanced thermal and RO technologies to maximise output while improving energy efficiency. In Morocco, drought conditions and declining rainfall have accelerated investment in desalination infrastructure. A plant near Agadir, inaugurated in 2022, supplies both drinking water and irrigation water to critical agricultural zones. By 2031, Morocco plans to
16 Stainless Steel World November 2025 www. stainless-steel-world. net