Pilot plants

We manufacture pilot plants of all types, from laboratory scale to small- and medium-scale prototypes.

Our experience ranges from pilots for large desalination plants, the removal of emerging micro-pollutants in drinking water and wastewater treatment plants, testing new urban and industrial wastewater treatment technologies for the dairy, meat, and canning industries, to small- and medium-scale testing of brackish and seawater desalination plants, demineralization equipment, and more.

The purpose of pilot plants is to obtain results that can be replicated on a larger scale in major water projects, especially desalination plants. An example of this is the Taweelah Desalination Plant in Abu Dhabi, where I’mWATER executed the pilot plant for a 909,000 m³/day desalination plant—the largest in the world. The pilot plant was built integrated into a 20 ft shipping container, fully insulated thermally and acoustically, with an independent electrical room and a reverse osmosis (RO) system with a capacity of 125 m³/day.

The RO system design consists of a first pass with two 8” pressure vessels containing 7 elements, and a second pass with a first stage featuring two 4” pressure vessels and a second stage with one pressure vessel.

We also build pilot plants for innovative projects currently under development, such as the latest one carried out for a startup to test their proprietary and patented microplastic removal technology. The project involves the pilot-scale development of an innovative system designed to detect, quantify, and collect these pollutant particles from wastewater.

The project aims specifically at microplastic decontamination using collectors that retain and eliminate the particles, achieving up to a 90% removal rate of the plastic particles found in wastewater. The plant has a production capacity of 100,000 liters per hour.

With our pilot plants—tailored to the specific needs of each project to be scaled and/or tested—solutions are validated on an industrial scale through smaller-scale testing, enabling the adaptation, improvement, and optimization of all subsequent manufacturing processes.