IN FOCUS

Power plants extract and discharge more water than municipalities and industry combined. Water shortages and environmental regulations are opening a large market for many different technologies.

In the second quarter of 2016, GEA posted organic growth in order intake of 7.3 percent, up to EUR 1,222 million.

In the first half of 2016, sales, operational EBITA, and operational ROSA remained stable. Order intake — impacted by oil and gas market headwinds — decreased, but increased by 8% sequentially in the second quarter of 2016. Significant savings from the Sulzer Full Potential (SFP) program offset the impact from market headwinds.

In the next five years, suppliers of thermal and membrane desalination systems will sell systems valued at $73.5 billion of which $21 billion will be spent on brackish water systems and $52.5 billion for seawater systems.

Municipal wastewater plants invest heavily in odor control scrubbers. Worldwide purchases next year will exceed $1.3 billion. The largest regional purchaser will be East Asia followed by NAFTA.

Flow control and treatment revenues in India will grow by more than 8 percent this year and reach $12 billion in 2017. The Indian economy is now the world s 9th largest. GDP growth is forecast to exceed 7 percent.

The sales of reagent for stationary NOx control in 2017 will exceed $3 billion. This does not include sales of AdBlue for mobile NOx control which are growing rapidly. The SCR catalyst market will also be down to just under $1.6 billion from a peak two years ago of $1.8 billion.

Sales of ultrapure water (UPW) filtration and treatment equipment will exceed $3.8 billion in 2017. Electronics companies will be the largest purchasers. Semiconductor, photovoltaics, flat panel and memory manufacturers will be purchasing UPW hardware and consumables for the purpose of washing etching solutions and other fluids from their products in process.

In 2017 suppliers of reverse osmosis (RO), microfiltration and ultrafiltration equipment and membranes will generate sales of $11.2 billion. The growth rate for the industry in the next 10 years will certainly exceed GDP. The question is whether it can achieve growth close to 10 percent or whether annual growth will be a more conservative 5 percent a year.

Over the last twenty years, more than $150 billion has been invested in systems to remove acid gases from the stacks of coal-fired power, waste-to-energy, cement, steel, mining and other industrial plants.