Development of temperature criteria for marine discharge from a large industrial seawater supplies project in Western Australia

Abstract

A multi-user industrial water supply system is under construction on the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia, 1400 km north of Perth, to support a number of gas-processing plants that convert natural gas into ammonia, dimethyl-ether, methanol or liquid fuels. At full design capacity, the project will abstract 280 000 m3/day of seawater from King Bay. Seawater will be conveyed by pipeline to each processing plant and used for cooling (using evaporative systems) and process feed water (after desalination). The total return flow (comprising cooling tower blow-down and desalination concentrate) will amount to 210 000 m3/day. A pipeline collects the return flow from each industry and discharges into a submerged marine outfall in King Bay. As part of the project environmental approvals process, the Department of the Environment (DoE) prescribed discharge criteria for the temperature of the return flow entering King Bay.

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