In May 2008, Coates Hire was approached by Citic Pacific Mining to provide Reverse Osmosis Desalination Equipment to supply clean water to meet both human consumption and construction purposes on the Iron Ore project at Cape Preston, Karratha.
Coates Hire supply and maintain a range of reverse osmosis Desalination Equipment that can change any brackish or sea water into pure drinking water. Such equipment is ideal for remote projects where scheme water is not available.
Reverse Osmosis is the most common form of desalination which involves the removal of salts and other minerals from the water as it forced through a semi-permeable membrane under extreme pressures.
A recent solution on pre-filtration and dosing to eliminate both sediment and bacteria was developed to solve the initial problem of active bacteria which was attacking the stainless steel components of Reverse Osmosis Desalination units.
This has been a success and has enabled the production of clean water to Cape Preston to grow to the target of 1 million litres per day.
Other projects include:
- Oxiana at Golden Grove
- Oz Minerals at Prominent Hill
- Apache at Devil Creek
Coates Hire now have 18 Reverse Osmosis units in the fleet. They vary in size from 8kl -200kl per day with orders in place to construct two new 200kl to fill confirmed orders.