The world needs water – the world needs stainless

By Hachemi Loucif, Head of Desalination Business at Outokumpu

As much as these regions need water they need stainless steel plates, bars, tubes, pipes and fittings. Stainless steel has become the universal and practically indispensable construction material for modern desalination plants. The hot and highly corrosive environment in a distillation plant is so demanding that only the best, high performing materials withstand the challenge.

SIDEM builds the world’s largest MED plant with duplex stainless steel from Outokumpu.

SIDEM are using the “Dual Duplex” concept for Al Hidd, the worlds largest MED plant, with a capacity of 273 000 m3/day. The same concept was also applied for Sharjah, a 72.500 m3/day MED plant under construction in the UAE.

The Dual Duplex concept combines the excellent properties of the different duplex grades into an optimal construction. The more corrosion resistant 2205 is exposed to the more hostile conditions and the lower alloyed and less costly 2304 is used for less corrosive sections. The benefits by using duplex are numerous; improved corrosion resistance and higher strength compares to conventional austenitic stainless steels. Duplex chambers can be built with thinner plates, resulting in less material, less beveling and welding, easier handling and on top of that less environmental impact. By using, the Dual Duplex concept, considerable cost savings are possible.

The combination translates into increasingly affordable desalination plant investments and, as a result, can make fresh water increasingly available where it is most needed.

We melt the steel
We roll the plate
We make the pipes and fittings

www.outokumpu.com

About the company
Outokumpu is an international stainless steel and technology company. Our vision is to be the undisputed number one in stainless, with success based on operational excellence. Customers in a wide range of industries use our metal products, technologies and services worldwide. We are dedicated to helping our customers gain competitive advantage.