Desalination - CO2 is important when making clean and safe drinking water

Safe drinking water has become a matter of global concern. It impacts everything – health, poverty, and growth. Desalination plants signify a solution to this matter, as they can create safe drinking water from sea/brackish water by thermal evaporation/distillation or reverse osmosis processes.

CO2 is generated on-site to ensure food-grade and reliable supply of CO2 for the re-mineralization process making the distillate suitable for drinking water.


The CO2 plants are customized to meet the highest quality demands, as well as the international standards applicable for water and power plants.

In the left menu, you will find further information about our competencies within desalination.


Best available CO2 plants

Designed to cope with the strictest needs and requirements
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of innovation and quality at Union Engineering. Both things keep pushing our expertise further and make us live up to needs and requirements around the globe.


Our CO2 generating plants within the desalination industry provide you with:

  • Quality and Reliability - equipment from first-class suppliers and redundant design provide maximum uptime.
  • High Performance - cost-effective solutions e.g. NoxFlash delivers minimum lifetime operating costs.
  • Customized designs - meeting customer-specific demands and regulatory requirements.
  • Environmental procured - equipment, materials, and corrosion protection for marine and salty atmosphere.

Technological advantages

Ensured performance from project phase to hand-over to customer
CO2 generating plants (CBU) are based on the combustion of fossil fuels such as diesel oil, heavy fuel oil, kerosene, natural gas, LPG, or LNG.

Through combustion, scrubbing, absorption, stripping, adsorption, and separation technology, the CO2 generating plants meet the strictest CO2 quality requirements regardless of the fuel type.

RESULT-DRIVEN TECHNOLOGY – NOXFLASH AND PUR-D

All Pentair Union Engineering generating plants are based on amine plants, including NOxFlash and PUR-D.


The NOxFlash technology is the result of innovation and research and has been proven in our installations since 2006. The NOxFlash technology brings NOx levels to food-grade purity and:

  • Replaces the traditional use of scrubbing with PPM (potassium permanganate) solution, reducing cost and environmental impact.
  • Acts as proven abatement of benzene (aromatic hydrocarbons) in the final product.

The PUR-D technology is the final purification step, consisting of a distillation column, obtaining CO2 purity of min. 99.99% (v/v).

All plants are designed for high efficiency and reliability through components selected for 24/7 operation.


Meeting project needs

Ensured performance from project phase to hand-over to customer
The result is what matters. But it requires expertise and exact preparation to get there. At Union Engineering every step is supported by innovative technology and a team of project engineers with years of experience in handling the challenges of desalination:


  • Project management through the project phases from design and manufacturing to implementation of the CO2 plant is finally accepted by the client.
  • Documentation - Inspection and Test Plans, hazop, quality dossiers, and certificates to meet regulatory requirements.
  • On-site installation and performance testing to verify that the CO2 plants are operating in accordance with the specifications.