GE Power and Water is supplying its technology solutions to GELOR – a consortium of GE Betz and Laing O’Rourke Construction – which is constructing a water treatment plant at QGC’s Kenya production site near Chinchilla, Queensland. The water treatment facility will have the capacity to treat up to 100 million litres per day (MML/d) to be used on farms, in industry and as town supply, and will integrate the CSG-fuelled Waukesha and Jenbacher gas engines for the first time.
The engines — which have been delivered to the site by Clarke Energy, GE’s exclusive gas engine distributor in Australia — will generate reliable, onsite power for GE’s membrane and thermal water treatment technologies, which will, in turn, desalinate water produced during the extraction of CSG.
According to GE, Queensland is Australia’s focal point of CSG extraction, accounting for more than 90 per cent of the country’s annual CSG production as the industry looks to expand from being a regional distributed energy supplier into a significant, global source of LNG. The company adds that using CSG to generate electricity instead of coal can reduce greenhouse emissions by up to 70 per cent.
To ensure QGC has reliable onsite power for its water treatment at its Kenya facility, GE is supplying the GELOR consortium with:
- Three of GE’s Waukesha 12 volt 275GL+ mechanical drive engines, which are efficient, powerful, fuel flexible engines that will power vapour compressors used to help treat brine water at the site
- Seven of GE’s 3.3 megawatt (MW) J620 Jenbacher gas engines. These will generate approximately 23.1 MW to support QGC’s Kenya water treatment plant, which will recycle wastewater created during the gas production process .
“As Australia’s growing CSG industry works to become a global supplier of LNG, QGC’s Kenya project illustrates how GE Energy’s integrated portfolio offers customers a one-stop solution to meet their critical onsite power and water treatment technology needs and ensure that projects comply with various environmental regulations governing the CSG industry,” says GE Power and Water Chief Executive Officer and President – Gas Engines Rafael Santana. “QGC’s Kenya project marks the first time that we are jointly deploying our Waukesha and Jenbacher gas engines for an onsite power project.”
The plant is expected to begin commercial operation in 2012.
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