CONSTRUCTION of a seawater desalination plant, which was jointly built by Qingdao and the Abengoa Group in Spain, will be finished and start debugging facilities at the end of this year. The country’s largest seawater desalination project will be expected to start operation officially at the end of July next year.

After it starts operation, it can desalinate 100,000 tons of seawater a day, which can supply water to more than 500,000 residents in the city.

The Huangdao power plant in Qingdao built its first seawater desalination equipment in 2002 and at present, the plant has three large systems of the desalination equipment. The desalinated water is mainly for industrial use.

Several other factories in the city also set up desalination equipment for industrial use. The equipment has helped them save more than 3 million cubic meters of water a year.

According to the city’s plan, Qingdao will build seven seawater industrial bases in areas such as Xiaozhou Bay, Jiaonan and Laoshan District to make more use of seawater, building the city into a national leading city in seawater use. The city is expected to desalinate 400,000 cubic meters of water a day and the production value of the seawater desalination industry is expected to reach 12 billion yuan in 2015.

(Wang Yuanyuan, Qin Bao)