Moncofa desalination plant (Castellon)

The Moncofa desalination plant, built and operated by Lantania, is located in Moncofa, in the province of Castellón, and forms part of the set of actions implemented by the Spanish Government to obtain new water resources in areas with water shortages.

The scope of the project included seawater open intake, pumping, physical pretreatment, consisting of two stages of sand filtration and cartridge safety filtration, chemical pretreatment, reverse osmosis system with energy recovery, post-treatment, product water storage, pumping station and discharge through an outfall.

The reverse osmosis system was designed for a flow rate of 30,000 m³/d, but the necessary civil works for a future expansion of up to 60,000 m³/d were carried out. It consists of three reverse osmosis racks with more than 3,300 membranes, three high-pressure pumps, three booster pumps, three second-pass feed pumps and three energy recovery trains. Post-treatment is carried out by remineralisation of the permeate based on calcite beds and vaporisation. The plant has two tanks for product water storage with a combined capacity of more than 43,000 m³ and two groups of pumps for the transfer of product water for the municipalities of Moncofa and Xilxes.

This desalination plant has contributed to solving the growing demand for water, both for human consumption and agricultural use, in the coastal area of the Plana Baja region in Castellón by adding new resources to the region and distributing them to the Moncofa and Xilxes networks.