I listened to that interview with Christian over weekend. A lot...

I listened to that interview with Christian over weekend. A lot of interesting information he spoke about regarding the water opportunity and investigations that a UK consultant is currently doing. He mentioned several mines and offtakes that maybe part of the water supply that are limited in development without water. Also presumably other communities that require supplement drinking water.

A bit of research on the Escondida copper project and water supply as Christian mentioned multiple players interested in water supply from low elevations, 2100m and 4000m copper discoveries. Escondida plant maybe similar to what HCH and other consortia could be considering as offtake mines that go up into the Andes require desalinated water. We dont which is good.

Escondida is 3100m elevation and there was purpose build desalination plant build in 2018. The summary details are as follows;

• 2500 litres/second desalination plant (216 Megalitres/day or ~65 Gigalitres a year operating 300 days a year)
• 3100m lift of this water through two 1m diameter pipes that travel 170km in length. This is a massive pipeline and no doubt very difficult to construct in Andes with easements/terrain etc
• 4 pumping stations to get the water from coast to this elevation. I would assume break tanks and very high lift pumps being used.
• 120km 220KV power supply. This would equally be challenging to construct and maintain. Unsure if its underground or above ground... Underground joints would be a challenge.
• $3.4bn to construct in 2018 but unsure what currency (assume USD?) and how long it took?
• Escondida desal plant is the largest in the Americas according to link - unsure if it has been eclipsed since then
• So a large desal but judging from numbers but smaller than a lot of the Australian plants supplying our citiies

So its all possible and been done before here but i guess it depends how large the customer base is and their locations as to the size and technical requirements of a seawater/desalination supply.

https://www.bechtel.com/projects/escondida-water-supply/

https://im-mining.com/2018/04/07/bhp-opens-escondida-water-supply-largest-desalination-plant-latin-america/