Feb. 16, 2012 -- Toray Industries has won an order to supply reverse osmosis (RO) membrane elements to the Tuaspring Desalination Plant in Singapore. The plant will have a water production capacity of 318,500 cubic meters per day (84 MGD), making it the largest in Asia outside of the Middle East.

The plant is being developed by Tuaspring Pte Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hyflux Ltd. of Singapore, under a 25-year DBOO (design, build, own and operate) contract. The facility is situated on a site next to the SingSpring Desalination Plant in Tuas, Singapore's first large-scale desalination plant.

Toray is scheduled to supply its RO membrane elements in 2012 and the Tuaspring Desalination Plant is expected to start operations in 2013.

Singapore is implementing a policy called the Four National Taps (local catchment water, imported water, NEWater and desalinated water) with the aim of establishing a sustainable water supply system. Under the policy, the Singaporean government is actively expanding the area for water catchment up to 66% of the country while promoting expanded use of NEWater (reclaimed from used water, which already accounts for 30% of utilization) and enhancement of water desalination facilities in order to reduce its dependency on the water import agreement with its neighbor Malaysia, which is scheduled to expire in 2061.

Toray has supplied RO membrane elements to other major Singaporean plants, including the SingSpring Desalination Plant in Tuas (production capacity: 136,400 cubic meters per day; operations started in 2005) and the NEWater plant in Changi (production capacity: 228,000 cubic meters per day; operations started in 2010), which is the latest and biggest under the NEWater project.

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