China is looking at the feasibility of a nuclear seawater desalination plant in the Yantai area of Shandong Peninsula, producing 80-160,000 m3/day by MED process, using a 200 MWt NHR-200 reactor. A 100,000 m3/d seawater RO plant supplied by Abengoa of Spain started operating early in 2013 at Qingdao in Shandong province. Another project is for a 330,000 m3/day plant near Daya Bay.
A 50,000 m3/day Aqualyng plant was completed in October 2011 at Caofeidian on Bohai Bay in Hebei province, and a second stage doubled this in 2012. The Hong Kong based Beijing Enterprises Water Group (BEWG) with Aqualyng is building a 1 million m3/d RO plant at Caofeidian for CNY 7 billion to supply Beijing through a 270 km pipeline by 2019, and a 3 million m3/d plant is planned to expand this to supply some 1 billion m3/yr to the capital, about one-third of its needs. The pipeline will cost about CNY 10 billion, and supply desalinated water at CNY 8/m3 ($1.28/m3).
In March 2013 the National Development and Reform Commission announced new plans for seawater desalination, including for the cities of Shenzhen and Zhoushan, Luxixiang Island in Zhejiang Province, Binhai New Area in Tianjin, Bohai New Area in Hebei, and several industrial parks and companies. The cost is likely to be some CNY 21 billion ($3.35 billion). China aims to produce 2.2 million m3/day of desal water by 2015, more than three times the 2011 level. More than half of the freshwater channelled to islands and more than 15% of water delivered to coastal factories will come from the sea by 2015, according to the plan.
A 300,000 m3/d seawater desal plant at Tianjin is under construction and will be the first zero-liquid discharge (ZLD) plant in the world. It is due to supply petrochemical plants from 2017.
Nuclear Desalination