Italian firm to supply equipment for Oman salt refinery project
Plant will reduce Oman’s dependence on imported salt
Leading Italian technology firm Manfredini & Schianchi Srl says it has been contracted by an Omani company to undertake the construction of the Sultanate’s first largescale salt refinery at Bantoot near Duqm.
Local Omani oil and gas services provider Al Ghalbi International Engineering & Contracting LLC (GIE) is building the multimillion dollar plant, which will harvest salt from seawater for industrial and consumer uses.
The facility, due to be come into operational in the third quarter of this year, has been conceived as an ‘In-Country Value (ICV)’ generating project as it will help dramatically reduce the Sultanate’s dependence on salt imports.
Modena-based Manfredini & Schianchi, a family owned business, says it has been entrusted by GIE with the development of a 135,000 tonnes per annum sea salt production plant on Oman’s Wusta coast.
The contract entails the supply and installation of a turnkey refinery plant with an output of 40 tonnes per hour of salt with a final purity of 99.8 per cent. Key components include a washing system based on the company’s proprietary technology, centrifuging system, drying line, salt grading system, crushing mill and (Picture for illustration) packaging system.
“This high standard of purity will allow the customer to sell the final product at an extremely competitive price to its clients (petroleum industry) that were previously forced to purchase only recrystallised salt (vacuum) at a very high price,” according to the Italian equipment manufacturer.
“These results in terms of purity, using mechanical refining methods, have been achieved thanks to the training that Manfredini & Schianchi (MS) offers staff in charge of production, harvesting and processing, and thanks to a tailor made system, in particular, special modifications have been made on the purification zone, which represents the “state of the art” in the technology for washing, centrifugation, drying and grading the finished product,” it said.
Also as part of the project, the Italian firm is providing assistance in the development of salt ponds covering an area of around one square kilometre just off the coast at Bantoot. A special layout of tank crystallisers is being constructed to ensure continuous harvesting of salt from seawater — a process that will take advantage of Duqm’s favourable climate, the company added.
A sizeable proportion of the project’s salt output will be utilised by oil and gas companies in the Sultanate, which require salt for their drilling operations, it is learnt.