Creating beach sand for Kuwait’s Sabah Al Ahmed Sea City
Millions of cubic metres of in-spec beach sand is required by the middle of 2024 for the project
The visionary Sabah Al Ahmad Sea City (SAASC) is a sprawling metropolis of man-made islands and waterways that will eventually house over 250,000 residents. With construction gaining pace, developer La’ Ala Al-Kuwait Real Estate Company, partnered with CDE, a leading supplier of sand and aggregate washing solutions, to help meet its busy production schedule.
In its current phase, some 1.35m cubic metres of in-spec beach sand is required by the middle of 2024. With the capacity to process up to 435 tonnes per hour, the CDE wash plant is delivering over 2,500 tonnes of fine sand for pipe bedding and almost 1,800 tonnes of coarse beach sand every day.
The Challenge
As construction of the visionary Sabah Al Ahmad Sea City (SAASC) continues at pace, developer La’ Ala Al-Kuwait Real Estate Company, the firm behind the pioneering project, has partnered with CDE to help meet its busy production schedule.
With a pre-existing wash plant set-up reaching the end of its operational life, a modern solution was needed to sustain the momentum behind the project.
Mr Mark Dunglison, Director for Planning & Design, Earthworks & Marine at the La’ Ala Al-Kuwait Real Estate Company said: “We’re working with dry feed material excavated from below sea-level, which can be highly variable, and so we needed a solution that could respond to these variations and deliver consistent output without disruption to the production schedule.
“Traditionally, most wash plants work with fresh water or some sort of brackish water. At this site we’re dealing with salt water, which has salinity of up to 35,000ppm (parts per million). It’s very corrosive. The plant had to be able to work with high saline levels.”
The Solution
We proposed a solution comprising of our M5500 modular wash plant, which integrates feeding, screening, washing and stockpiling on a single chassis; the EvoWash 151, a compact sand washing system that screens and separates smaller sand and gravel fractions through integrated high-frequency dewatering screen, sump and hydrocyclones; a configuration of six Infinity™ fine screens; and an efficient water management and recycling system to recover up to 90% of process water for immediate reuse.
To address high levels of salinity, CDE introduced a series of additional measures to protect the plant.
“CDE added additional protective measures to the pipework, to the tanks, wherever they could. Stainless steel non-corrosive products, rubber linings, special coatings, and more are all carefully considered to ensure this plant can work in a very extreme saline environment,” Mr Dunglison explained.
The Results
With the capacity to process up to 435 tonnes per hour, the CDE wash plant is delivering over 2,500 tonnes of fine sand for pipe bedding and almost 1,800 tonnes of coarse beach sand every day as part of ambitious targets to deliver 1.3 million cubic metres of in-spec beach sand by the summer.
On average, the plant is receiving and processing over 6,000 tonnes of feed material every day.
Commenting on the environmental benefits of the plant, Mr Dunglison: “We’re more efficient in our diesel use. The flocculant that we’re using within the thickener allows water to be recycled, which we didn’t have previously. It means we require significantly less top up water. This is good because it limits how much we need to draw from the natural environment and any we discharge back into the water course is well within EPA tolerance.”
“This solution is our purpose in action,” adds Ruchin Garg, CDE Regional Manager for Middle East & Africa. “We’re driven to create our best world, a ton at a time. That means maximising the potential of natural resources in the most sustainable way possible, with greater efficiency and less waste than ever before.”
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