Vertical intake wells

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Hello, Can vertical intake wells be used for all sizes of desalination plants?

3 Answers

  1. Inima built a plant in Los Cabos Mexico in 2006, which from memory, has 9 wells and produces just under 21,000 m3/day. I don't know how big the well field is but I suspect smaller than 2 km because it serves a resort area. At 50m between wells it would be 400m long. Perhaps someone more familiar with the plant can provide details. The existence of this plant however doesn't change the fact that most plants use open intakes and it is impractical to use beach wells for plants larger than about 20,000 m3/day.

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  3. Hi Alisha: Vertical well intakes are suitable for relatively small seawater desalination plants only - i.e., for plants of capacity smaller than 20,000 m3/day becasue of the limited volume of water that can be collected by one well. Typically such wells can collect between 100 and 4,000 m3/day of source water per well. Since at least 50 meters is needed between the well so they do not interfere with each other's perormance, the use of these wells for large plants would require occupying very large portion of the ocean shore, which makes them impractical for large plants. At present the largest seawater desalination plant with vertical wells is located in Sur, Oman. This plant has production capacity of 18,000 m3/day and the intake wells for the plant occupy over 2 km of seashore. The subsurface conditions at thie location are ideal for well intakes and individual wells collect around 3,600 m3/day of water - in most locations worldwide it is very difficulat to find favorable unifro coastal aquifer conditions spreading over a long lenght of the shoreline. Therefore, over 90 % of seawater desalination plants worldwide use open intakes rather than vertical beach wells.