Safewater Chemicals LLC (Safewater), a company incorporated in the United Arab Emirates, is constructing a US$ 25million Chlor-Alkali Plant in the Industrial City of Abu Dhabi.

The plant is currently under construction and will commence commercial production during December 2003.

Al Jaber Group, one of the UAE's largest contracting and manufacturing enterprises, has developed the company and the Chlor-Alkali Plant project, which represents the first-step in a investment program in to the chemicals sector for Al Jaber Group. Al Jaber Group is a 30-year old enterprise, headquartered in Abu Dhabi, employing approximately 17,000 people.

The UAE Offsets Group (UOG) has provided Safewater Chemicals LLC  approval as an Offsets Venture. The approval was provided after a rigorous evaluation by the UOG.  which looked at  potential Offset Ventures on a number of key criteria - including a demonstrable ability to create value addition for the UAE economy, create and distribute wealth amongst UAE citizens, be viable in the long term, be non-labour intensive and introduce new technologies into the economy.

The Chlor-Alkali Plant will produce three products - sodium hypochlorite, hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide. These will be produced via an electrolytic process using sodium chloride (salt), water and electricity as the primary feedstocks, with subsequent concentration and absorption processes.

The electrolytic process is a process whereby two feeder streams enter an electrolyser (cell module). One stream is saturated sodium chloride brine, and the second stream is soft water.  Electricity is used to electrolyse these two streams. The brine is placed in contact with the anode, where the chloride is oxidised, and the water is placed in contact with the cathode forming hydrogen and a hydroxide ion.  The electrolytic process to be employed by Safewater is an environmentally friendly process using a membrane to separate the cell compartments. This process overcomes the health and environmental concerns of earlier mercury and asbestos based processes.

Production of hydrochloric acid (HCl) is performed in two HCl absorbers.  The HCl absorber consists of two concentric tubes through which flow the hydrogen and chlorine vapours at controlled rates, which react in an exothermic process to form hydrochloric vapour. This vapour is then absorbed into soft water. Caustic soda is produced at 25per cent w/t from the electrolytic process. This solution will be concentrated to 50 per cent w/t using a single-effect evaporator. The evaporator will feature rising and falling film technology.

Safewater's products will be ultra-pure. The chemical composition of the products will contain significantly less contaminants than currently imported products because of the process employed in the Chlor-Alkali Plant and the strict purity standards being applied to the feedstocks. 

'This ultra-purity of the products promotes the UAE authorities' efforts with regard to environmental protection, especially in the marine environment, where contaminants can very quickly destroy marine life', the Chairman, Mr. Obeid Al Jaber stated.  The products produced from the Chlor-Alkali plant include 32 per cent hydrochloric acid, 25 per cent and 50 per cent caustic soda lye, and 11 per cent and 13 per cent sodium hypochlorite.
Safewater's key markets will be the oil and gas sector, the water generation/transmission sector, and wastewater sector, certain industrial applications and the commercial segment. 

At the present time these markets are served by imported products, which are of a substandard purity when compared to Safewater's products, or, use the highly hazardous chlorine gas for disinfection of potable water.  Safewater has been actively informing potential customers of its plans and products.  The feedback that has been received from such potential customers has been very positive.

'Safewater will be a competitive and reliable UAE-based supplier for the traders, wholesalers and end-users' the Chairman, Mr. Obeid Al Jaber stated.
As a leading industrial and contracting enterprise, Al Jaber Group is committed to participating in the government's program of industrialisation of the economy.  Safewater's Chlor-Alkali Plant achieves this objective on a number of levels.

Firstly, the company will provide a local, secure source of chemicals of strategic importance to two essential economic sectors - hydrocarbons and water.  These industries are at present reliant on imported products.  The project therefore substitutes importation of foreign-produced products, with local value-added production.  Secondly, the Chlor-Alkali Plant's technology is an environmentally friendly membrane cell based electrolytic process - avoiding the use of toxic chemicals such as mercury and asbestos, and replacing the use of hazardous chlorine gas with the safer and more manageable sodium hypochlorite. The use of which  also improves the rates of disinfection in potable water.

To assure the reliability of the Chlor-Alkali Plant's operation, and Safewater's ability to meet customer demands for product quality and volumes, the company has appointed world recognised consultants and vendors for key process technologies.  Atkins, a global consulting engineering firm has been appointed by Safewater to undertake the process and detail engineering.  Atkins was appointed for their local representation and ability to interface with the global organisation to provide the needed expertise to carry out the scope of work.

Ionics Incorporated, will supply the membrane cell electrolyser units. Ionics Incorporated, has been a leader in the development of membrane cell technology for over fifty years. The firm has supplied more membrane cell modules than any other company in the world, andhas been awarded the design, supply, and commissioning of the electrolytic membrane cell modules and hydrochloric acid absorbers.

The contract awarded to Ionics is valued at AED30.2million. Ionics, will outsource the supply of the hydrochloric acid absorbers, to SGL Acotec GmbH, one of a group of companies collectively known as SGL Carbon Group who are extensively involved in the carbon, graphite and composites industrial sector, designing and fabricating many applications for customers in the steel, chemicals, energy, semiconductor, glass and ceramics, pharmaceuticals and automotive industries.

GEA Kestner is a French company, created 100 years ago, belonging to the mg Technologies Group. The company has been awarded the design, supply, and commissioning of the Caustic Soda Evaporator. The contract awarded to GEA Kestner is valued at AED2million. Continuous development work has enabled the company to maintain its leadership position in design and installation of many applications calling for evaporation and/or crystallization techniques. The company exhibits many significant references in applications for highly corrosive streams processing. Among them, caustic soda concentration have been a rather common application, starting decades ago with mercerising caustic, diaphragm cell liquor and, now, membrane cell liquor.

The construction contractor appointed by Safewater, for the procurement management, erection and cold commissioning of the Chlor-Alkali Plant is Al Jaber-LTA Engineering and Contracting (ALEC). ALEC is a joint venture between Al Jaber Group and South Africa's Grinaker-LTA and was established in 2000 to leverage the technical expertise of Grinaker-LTA and the local strength and presence of Al Jaber Group to win projects in the petrochemical sector in the GCC.