Total-Care Package for Pure Water in a 4-Star Hotel

The Challenge

Sitting on the Greek peninsula Chalkidiki/Sithonia directly at the Mediterranean Sea, is the modern 4 stars hotel complex, “Porto Carras Grand Resort”, featuring a guest capacity of around 2,000 guests.

In the year 2000, the new owners “Porto Carras/Technical Olympics”, started to refurbish and redeveloped this hotel complex completely. A major issue was the supply of high quality water for drinking, personal hygiene, swimming pools and other facilities such as a golf course, tennis courts, etc. Up to that time the water which had been supplied to the hotel was “salty” brackish water, impossible to be used for drinking or any other of the planned highend guest facilities. This had been a major reason for decreasing guests, so the water quality had to be improved dramatically. A decentralized solution, independent of the public water supply was favoured, since the public water supply was not able to supply enough water during the peak season.

The Solution

ProMinent took over the responsibility for the complete water treatment project at Porto Carras. From the first project meeting to the first glass of pure drinking water, required only 5 months. The project was executed in 5 major steps, completely controlled by ProMinent:

Step 1: Selection of water source and general treatment technology
ProMinent reviewed the possibilities of local well water resources by doing geological studies plus test boreholes. It became evident that no suitable water resources were available, as they could deliver only poor quality, brackish water. As a result, ProMinent proposed the desalination of seawater by means of reverse osmosis.

Step 2: Process design
Taking into account the specific needs of Porto Carras, ProMinent designed a tailor-made water treatment process composed of an array of different treatment steps to deliver drinking water from seawater. To ensure optimal water treatment, both technologically and economically, ProMinent has a portfolio of different treatment technologies to choose and combine:

• Pre-treatment of seawater, consisting of shock-disinfection, inline flocculation, multimedia filtration and chemical conditioning for reliable and continuous operation of the desalination generators.
• Desalination of seawater by reverse osmosis.
• Post-treatment of the desalinated water, consisting of pH adjustment to protect the pipelines from corrosion and disinfection to ensure sterility of the water.

Step 3: System engineering
All necessary system components are “made by ProMinent” and therefore fit together perfectly:

• ProMinent complete metering systems for disinfection, flocculation, chemical conditioning, and pH-adjustment.
• Three trains of ProMinent® reverse osmosis generators type Dulcosmose®, each producing 158,500 gpd (600 m3/day) of drinking water and rejecting more than 99 % of salts. An energy recovery system is included on every generator which saves about 40 % of energy costs.
• ProMinent® sensor, measuring and control technology for monitoring and control of all process parameters.
• Central control system for monitoring and control of the complete installation.

Step 4: Installation and commissioning
The complete system was installed and became fully operational in the peak tourist season of 2002 and its capacity was extended during the peak season 2003. The fact that there was no disturbance whatsoever of the hotel operation throughout the installation work, even during the peak season 2002, was one of the reasons that Porto Carras chose ProMinent and also for the realization of the water supply extension project in the year 2003.

Step 5: Operation
Integral part of the treatment solution is a service concept that assures maximum operational availability of the treatment generator. The three main pillars of this service concept are:

1. Detailed on-site training of the generator operators at Porto Carras by ProMinent engineers.
2. Monitoring and control of the whole process and its system components by ProMinent via remote access by modem, using ProMinent’s PLC/SCADA system.
3. Providing a dedicated, ProMinent service engineer for on-the-spot support during peak season.

Result

Due to the resulting, constant availability of excellent water of a quality conforming to both WHO and EU standards, the number of guests at Porto Carras Grand Resort has risen significantly. These days the hotel is fully booked during all seasons. Thanks to ProMinent’s supply of premium quality water, the newly renovated hotel complex features excellent facilities, that were not possible with the water quality previously available, namely

• a fitness club
• a conference center
• swimming pools
• a children’s playground
• horse riding stables and trails
• an 18 hole golf course
• 9 floodlight tennis courts
• a diving school
• a water sports and mountain bike center.

The premium quality of the hotel complex impressed even the Greek president: he chose the hotel complex to be the location for the Greek EU summit conference 2003.

Total Care Package

The ProMinent offer to Porto Carras can be summarized as a “total care package”:

• complete water treatment solution from one competent, reliable supplier
• Smooth execution of the project
• optimal solution, both commercially and technically
• trouble-free operation of the water supply system
• excellent after-sales service.

What the Customer Said

“We chose ProMinent for the execution of our water treatment generator at Porto Carras Grand Resort because they offered a complete solution including the latest technology and full service at the best price/performance ratio. It proved to be the right choice! Our guests at Porto Carras Grand Resort are feeling most comfortable while enjoying the best water quality. Because of the excellent experience we made with ProMinent, it went without saying that the extension of the water treatment generator was again “made by ProMinent”.

Mr. George M. Hadjiosif, General Director of Porto Carras Grand Resort Technical Olympics Group