Ocean Conversion (Cayman) Limited
NORTH SOUND
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Plant
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Capacity: Contract
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Customer: Commissioning
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Located on the island of Grand Cayman, near the Owen Roberts International Airport and the Company’s Red Gate facility.
This plant was commissioned in 2002 to meet the expanding potable water needs of the island. The plant’s original production capacity was 792,000 US gallons per day, but was expanded to 1.6 million US gallons per day in early 2007.
This plant is one of three facilities, designed, built and operated by Ocean Conversion (Cayman) Limited for the Water Authority-Cayman. The Water Authority-Cayman is the government agency responsible for water supply and distribution to the areas of Grand Cayman outside of the Seven Mile Beach / West Bay area serviced by Cayman Water Company. Currently all the water supplied by the Water Authority-Cayman on Grand Cayman is produced in plants built and operated by Consolidated Water.
Grand Cayman has very limited groundwater resources and prior to the Company’s introduction of desalination to the island, homes, businesses and hotels relied primarily on rainwater collected in cisterns. The introduction of desalination by the Company was instrumental in allowing the islands economy to grow and prosper over the years.
Because the cost of electricity on Caribbean islands is typically 4 to 5 times greater than in the United States, and Grand Cayman is no exception, a critical factor in the design and operation of this plant is the overall energy efficiency of the facility. To that end, the plant utilizes the advanced Calder DWEERTM (Dual Work Exchanger Energy Recovery) system to recover energy from the high pressure brine stream.
Raw seawater for the plant is obtained from wells located on site, which avoids the need for expensive pretreatment equipment and chemicals associated with open sea intakes. However, the raw seawater does contain hydrogen sulfide, which is removed from the final product using a degasifying tower.
