The world's largest commercial reed sewage treatment plant recently celebrated a decade of operation. The facility is operated by BAUER Nimr, a local subsidiary of BAUER Resources GmbH, in Oman. With an area roughly the size of 1,600 soccer fields, it can be seen on satellite images. The plant is a multi-award-winning lighthouse project for the biological purification of polluted water from the oil production of the Nimr oil field in the south of the country, the first phase of which was completed by Nimr in 2011.
After only three weeks, the system reached the first milestone: "The contractually agreed cleaning capacity of 45,000 m3 per day was far exceeded," said Ulrich Emmer, managing director of Bauer Nimr.
The construction work was successfully completed with the third and final expansion in 2019. Today, up to 175,000 m3 of contaminated water pass through the system, a total of 370 million m3 of water has already been cleaned. And at the end of the process, a hydrocarbon content of less than 0.5 mg/l can be achieved. Almost 95% of the crude oil in the water can also be removed or recovered without the use of energy or chemicals. The plant treats contaminated water using natural flow processes in the form of graded clarifiers.
"With an order volume of around 600 million US dollars over the entire operating period, the reed sewage treatment plant in Oman is one of Bauer Resources' most important projects and will be operated by us for another 23 years," said Dr. Roman Breuer, managing director of BAUER Resources GmbH.
