Doña Inés de Collahuasi mining company has awarded Acciona, a Spanish contractor company, the design and construction of a seawater desalination plant in Puerto Patache de Collahuasi, located 70 kilometers south of Iquique, in Chile’s Tarapacá Region.
The EUR 258 million ($292 million) project is part of the Infrastructure Development and Improvement of Productive Capacity plan implemented by the mining company for the Tarapacá region. It also includes the plant operation and maintenance by Acciona for two years, extendable for another three.
The desalination plant in the Port of Patache will have an initial capacity of 1,050 liters per second. The project includes the execution of marine works, a pretreatment system, as well as the development of reverse osmosis and post-treatment technology to guarantee the availability of water resources, whose quality responds and adjusts to the different operating conditions of the mining company.
The construction of this new seawater dewatering plant accents Acciona’s position as one of the lead engineering firms for mining-related water treatment plants in Chile. Acciona’s first desalination plant provides water for mining use through reverse osmosis technology in Copiapó in Chile’s Atacama region. This plant incorporates its own technology in the pretreatment of the water, to protect the membranes against phenomena such as “red tide” or the proliferation of jellyfish, typical of that area of the Pacific Ocean.
Compañía Minera Doña Inés de Collahuasi is one of the top Chilean mining companies dedicated to the mining and production of copper concentrate and one of the largest worldwide.
