Reprinted from WaterWorld

BE’ER SHEVA, ISRAEL, Jan. 10, 2012 – Israel still remains one the world leaders in wastewater recycling and a collaboration between local farmers has demonstrated why the country will continue to lead with this application.

A co-operation of 34 farming settlements recently pooled their resources together to construct an effluent reuse system next to a wastewater treatment plant. Previously, the quality of reclaimed water from the facility was not suitable for “unlimited irrigation” purposes.

A MODOtec filtration system, including downstream Ultraviolet Technology treatment, with a capacity of 60,000 m³/day, was selected. A total of 90% of the produced effluent will be piped for agricultural irrigation and the remaining 10% used for irrigation of Be’er Sheva’s municipal parks.

Wastewater effluent reuse is becoming a common strategy in the region, especially for agricultural irrigation purposes, which have exhausted many groundwater supplies in the region.

Since 2000, the use of treated wastewater for irrigation by Israel’s agricultural sector increased from 17% of water consumed by the sector to more than 50%. Regulation has been a key driver, with stringent regulations to upgrade effluent standards set in motion in 2000 by Israel’s parliament.

In January 2010, the government approved regulations that would upgrade the 1992 minimal standard of 20 ppm biological oxygen demand (BOD) and 30 ppm total suspended solids (TSS) to 10 ppm BOD and 10 ppm TSS.

Estimates from the World Bank show that currently more than 40 million m³ of municipal wastewater is recycled daily and is expected to increase to approximately 55 million m³ by 2015.

Growth is likely to be centred around the Middle East region, which lacks natural sustainable potable water supplies and relies upon desalination for its drinking water needs.

Oman is playing host to a large scale water reuse project that will see thousands of kilometers of pipeline laid to connect homes to a new network. Haya Water’s project aims to connect over 30,000 homes, office and commercial buildings to the water reuse network. This will be supplied by a 80,000 m³ capacity wastewater treatment plant, using Membrane Bioreactor technology (MBR).

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- WaterWorld Middle East conference and exhibition will be launching in Qatar on February 6-8 2012 and will include conference sessions on Water Reuse and the use of MBR technology. For more information please click here.

Latest Articles

Wastewater reuse relieves agricultural irrigation drought in Israel (Jan 10, 2012)

Reprinted from Daily Alert, August 5, 2011

• Israel Helps Stem Global Food Crisis – Laura Kam
  As crops fail in Russia, as dust bowls replace fertile land in Asia and Central Africa, the issue of food security has leapt to the top of the world agenda. Israel, a desert nation, has developed a range of agriculture and water technologies that are already helping to feed the world. For decades, Israeli agriculture experts have been sharing their expertise with some of the poorest regions on earth, creating sustainable self-sufficiency in food and water supplies. In recent years, Israeli expertise has been heavily in demand in India, Africa and China.
      Israel is also a world leader in desalination – converting salt water to fresh water for human consumption or irrigation. The writer is the executive director for global affairs at The Israel Project. (Ynet News)
• Israeli Ingenuity Powers GM’s Cars of Tomorrow – David Halevi
  General Motors, one of the world’s largest automakers, not only has an R&D facility in Israel, but an entire corporate structure in Herzliya. The mission of GM Israel is to develop the technologies that will make the car of tomorrow the best vehicle ever built. GM opened its Israel site in 2005 and expects about 200 people – mostly engineers – to be on board by the end of 2013.
      GM Israel is developing technology in five areas: advanced sensing and vision systems; human interface systems that adapt voice and touch technology for autos; wireless enabling, allowing a vehicle’s systems to use networks to ensure constant communication; infotainment; and vehicle control and robotics for driverless navigation. One of GM’s venture capital funds, located in Israel, invested in Israeli startup Powermat, which makes wireless charging mats for cell phones and other electronic devices. GM plans to include the mats in vehicles as soon as 2012, allowing drivers to easily recharge their handheld devices while on the road. (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

Observations:

Land for War – Efraim Karsh and Asaf Romirowsky (Wall Street Journal)

• In putting the Palestinian demand for statehood to a vote, Abbas will end up subverting the international organization’s longstanding solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict – UN Security Council Resolution 242 – with unpredictable results. Passed in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War, Resolution 242 established the principle of "land for peace" as the cornerstone of future peace agreements between Israel and the Arabs, to be reached in negotiations between the two sides. Israel was asked to withdraw "from territories occupied in the recent conflict."

• The absence of the definite article "the" before "territories" was no accident: Issued a mere six months after Israel’s astounding triumph over the concerted Arab attempt to obliterate the Jewish state, the resolution reflected acceptance by the Security Council of the existential threat posed by the 1949 armistice line. The Security Council expected negotiations between Israel and the Arabs to produce a more defensible frontier for Israel, one consistent with the right of every state in the region "to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries."
• In the 44 years that have followed, Israel has persistently striven to make peace with its Arab neighbors. It withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula, constituting more than 90% of the territories occupied in 1967.
• The Palestinians have consistently misrepresented the resolution as calling for Israel’s complete withdrawal to the pre-June 1967 lines. They also sought to undermine the resolution’s insistence on the need for a negotiated settlement, seeking time and again to engineer an internationally imposed dictate despite their commitment to a negotiated settlement through the Oslo process. Since the inauguration of the Obama administration, Mr. Abbas has dropped all remaining pretenses of seeking a negotiated settlement, striving instead to engineer international enforcement of a complete Israeli withdrawal without a peace agreement, or, indeed, any quid pro quo.
• Mr. Karsh is director of the Middle East Forum (Philadelphia) and professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King’s College London. Mr. Romirowsky is adjunct scholar at the Middle East Forum and a doctoral student at King’s College London.

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu, Engineering News

reprinted August 4, 2011

Israel, a water-constrained country, is leaving no stone unturned in conserving this precious resource through a range of measures, including recycling, efficient use and desalination.

The country currently recycles about 75% of its municipal effluent for irrigation, mostly in the arid south, which receives a measly 100 mm/y of rainfall. An ambitious target of 100% recycling by 2014 has been set and, by that date, all agriculture in Israel will be based on retreated water, according to water utility Mekorot professional instructor Gal Shoham.
He told journalists from across the globe during a recent tour of Mekorot’s Shafdan wastewater treatment plant, in the Dan region, that, while the recycled water is used for irrigation, it is of potable quality and contributes to preserving the environment by curbing ecological damage caused by untreated wastewater.

Serving about two-million people in the densely populated Dan region, which incorporates the city of Tel Aviv, the Shafdan plant – Mekorot’s largest and one of the most advanced in the Middle East – treats 130-million cubic metres of wastewater a year.
Secondary effluent from the plant is used to infiltrate fields in Rishon Letzion and Yavne. From these fields, the effluent is recharged into aquifers, where it undergoes natural physical, biological and chemical processes that improve its quality. Water from the aquifers is pumped to the Negev desert, about 90 km away, where it is used for irrigation by citrus, carrots, potato, lettuce, wheat and flower growers.
Besides the Shafdan plant, Mekorot operates five other wastewater treatment plants with a daily flow of 460 000 m3 and a yearly capacity of about 180-million cubic metres.
Mekorot accounts for about 40% of the wastewater treated in Israel, or about 200-million cubic metres a year, and for the reuse of 60% of the country’s treated wastewater for agriculture.
The touring journalists – from all continents of the world – were also able to visit Ayala Water & Ecology, which has developed natural biological systems for the purification and enhancement of water, soil and air. The wastewater Ayala treats includes effluent from dairy farms, poultry farms and abattoirs, as well as other agricultural enterprises.
The company’s natural biological systems are also capable of treating domestic and industrial effluent containing oils, fats, hydrocarbons, emulsions and detergents, besides other things.
The company operates a facility at the Hiriya landfill site, in the Dan region, that treats landfill leachate as well as fresh garbage and contaminated drainage.
Ayala’s cutting-edge technology has been recognised internationally and its founder, Eli Cohen, is Israel’s representative on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s environmental specialist team in the phytotechnology applications field.
Ayala’s Hiriya site is a stone’s throw away from Arrow Ecology, which has developed technology that separates biodegradable organics like food and paper out of solid municipal waste before it is used to produce biogas that is fed into combined heat and power plants. The Hiriya site generates 1 MW of its electricity needs.
Solids like plastics are sold for recycling, while sludge from anaerobic reactors is used for agricultural purposes.
CEO Yair Zadik said the company’s 150 t/d plant treated 5% of all the garbage generated in Israel and that its technology could reduce landfilling by up to 80%.
Arrow Ecology built the first plant outside Israel, in Sydney, Australia, in 2008 and is to soon build further plants in Italy, China and India.
On the efficient water use front, Israel’s Netafim is perhaps the most well known enter- prise, with its drip irrigation systems now manufactured or distributed in several regions of the world.
The drip systems ensure that water is released directly onto a plant, tremendously cutting back on the amount of water used by irrigation methods such as flooding or sprinkling.
Netafim chief sustainability officer Naty Barak said during a tour of the company’s plant at the Hatzerim kibbutz – or gated community – that, thanks to drip irrigation, Israel’s Arava desert, which receives only about 20 mm/y of rainfall, has been turned into a significant agriculture hub, accounting for 65% of the country’s vegetable exports.
Netafim president and CEO Igal Aisenberg said the major success stories of drip irrigation on the African continent were the 11 600 ha Simunye sugar estate, in Swaziland, and the Kitui irrigation scheme, in Kenya’s arid east.
“[At Simunye], a cost analysis of seven different irrigation options was undertaken, and the one that offered the best return was the conversion of the dragline sprinkler system to subsurface drip irrigation.
“A postinvestment audit confirmed a sucrose increase of 15% and a water saving of 22%, compared with the sprinkler system, and this was better than originally expected,” said Aisenberg.
At Kitui, donors led by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation launched a drip irrigation project for 200 poor small-scale vegetable growers, most of whom were women and old people who could not continue irrigating their crops with buckets.
Moving from bucket to drip irrigation increased yields and income by 140% and 200% respectively, and saved water use by around 60%.
Meanwhile, desalination will account for 450-million cubic metres of Israel’s yearly water consumption of 1,4-billion cubic metres – up from about 300-million at present – when the Sorek seawater reverse-osmosis (SWRO) plant, currently under con- struction, starts operating in mid-2013.
The150-million-cubic-metre-a-year plant is being built by IDE Technologies, a joint venture between Israeli enterprises ICL Group and Derek Group. IDE built and operates – under a 25-year ‘build, operate and transfer’ (BOT) deal – the 118-million- cubic-metre-a-year Ashkelon plant, which was commissioned in 2005, and the 127-million- cubic-metre Hadera plant, which has been operating since 2009.
The Hadera plant – currently the biggest of its kind in the world – is also a 25-year BOT project.
The Via Maris consortium runs Israeli’s third operational SWRO desalination plant, Palmachim, with a capacity of 45-million cubic metres a year.
IDE Technologies executive VP for special projects Fredi Lokiel told Engineering News that the use of technologies like IDE’s proprietary three-centre technology and cascade boron treatment had helped the company to achieve some of the lowest costs for high-quality desalinated water at both Ashkelon, where a cubic metre costs $0,53, and at Hadera, where the cost is $0,57/m3.
He said that of the 1,4-billion cubic metres of water consumed in Israel each year, about 750-million cubic metres is used for domestic purposes, which meant that the 300-million-odd cubic metres supplied by the Ashkelon, Hadera and Palmachim plants accounts for close to 50% of Israel’s domestic water, as desalinated water is not used for agriculture or industrial purposes.
• Israeli companies and many others from across the globe will showcase their water, environmental and renewable-energy technologies at the Water 2011 conference and exhibition, in Tel Aviv, in November. The last Watec event, held in 2009, was attended by more than 20 000 people from 94 countries.
• Zhuwakinyu visited Israeli as a guest of the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute
.

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Tel: +27(0)11 622 3744 | Fax +27(0)11 622 9350 | newsdesk@engineeringnews.co.za
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Sivan 28, 5771, 30 June 11 12:23

by Elad Benari

(Israelnationalnews.com) An American company will help fund an Israeli company that uses microbial fuel cells to turn waste water into an energy source, Greenbang.com reported on Tuesday.

According to the report, Energy Technology Ventures, a joint venture of GE, NRG Energy and ConocoPhillips, has decided to invest an undisclosed amount in the Israeli company Emefcy Ltd. This is Energy Technology Ventures’ first investment in a non-U.S.-based company and is also its first investment related to water.

Emefcy was founded in early 2008 by serial water technology entrepreneurs Eytan Levy and Ronen Shechter. The company is marked as one of the most promising water technology start-up companies and has received technology leadership awards such as The Guardian’s Cleantech 100, Global Water Technologies top 10, Artemis Top 50 and more.

Emefcy’s technology uses the principle of a fuel cell to generate electricity directly from the water. Its “electrogenic bioreactor” features an anaerobic anode chamber connected to a cathode chamber by an ion exchange membrane, produces electricity as organic matter in waste water decays and drives a current through the fuel cell.

This is different from other systems which use aerobic processes or anaerobic digestion to produce methane (natural gas) from the decomposition of organic material in waste water.

The technology generates electricity and also produces treated water as a by-product. The result transforms waste water treatment “from an energy-intensive, cost-intensive and carbon-intensive process, into an energy-generating and carbon-reducing process.”

Emefcy expects to apply its process initially for waste water treatment in the food, beverage, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.

“We will use Energy Technology Ventures’ investment to continue development of our technology into full-scale commercial implementation by the end of this year for municipal and industrial wastewater treatment,” said Levy.

Energy Technology Ventures is a company which focuses on the development of next-generation energy technologies. It invests in and offers commercial collaboration opportunities to companies in the renewable power generation, smart grid, energy efficiency, oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear energy, emission controls, water and biofuels sectors. The three companies behind Energy Technology Ventures intend to help start-ups develop next-generation energy technology.

General Electric recently announced that it would be building a research and development center in Israel, its eighth in the country.

The new center, which will be built near its GE Healthcare subsidiary in Haifa, will focus on medical devices, water and CleanTech.

GE previously has worked with Israeli companies such as the Better Place electric car initiative as well as with companies dealing with medical devices and CleanTech.

www.IsraelNationalNews.com

© Copyright IsraelNationalNews.com

By SHARON UDASIN
Jerusalem Post, 28/03/2011

Water conference covers broad spectrum of both local and global topics, including preparation for climatic change.

Israel provides a key example of how countries should manage their water infrastructure in coming years, as national populations increase at unprecedented speeds and governments grapple with the need to combat water scarcity, according to Dr. Glen Daigger, president of the International Water Association.
Daigger addressed an audience of “water enthusiasts” at Monday’s annual Conference of Israeli Water Organizations, held in Ramat Gan’s Kfar Maccabia hotel.

“Many of the things I’ll talk about are already happening in Israel,” said Daigger, who is also senior vice president and chief wastewater process engineer at the American company CH2M HILL.
“Israel has a lot to share with the rest of the world, as do other progressive locations in water-short areas.”
The conference – hosted jointly by the Israeli Water Association, the Israel Water Works Association, the Israel Association of Water Resources and the Israel Desalinization Society – covered a broad spectrum of both local and global topics, including preparation for climatic change, management of surface runoff water, agricultural visions, reconstruction of water sources and new technologies.
But kicking off the day’s speeches and breakout sessions was Daigger’s call for increased relations between Israel and the International Water Association, as well as his praise for the country’s strides in water management.
“Israel has been dealing with this situation for a long, long time and is really one of the examples on the planet in terms of how many other places will need to be managing water,” he told The Jerusalem Post.

“Certainly in Israel and the Middle East, there has been a water shortage for most of human history, but if we look around the world, that’s an unusual circumstance,” Daigger continued, noting, however, that with worldwide population growth, this had changed dramatically.
“Water scarcity is no longer the exception; it’s becoming the rule,” he said.
“It’s really causing water professionals to have to think differently.”
To tackle this new “rule,” Daigger advocated international cooperation – and while Israel can certainly share its wealth of research and innovations on water management and technologies, it can also benefit from implementing other countries’ models, he said. Some other productive nations that he cited were Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the southwestern part of the United States.
“Your knowledge is really necessary for the rest of the world, but the experimentation going on there will continue to benefit you,” he said to the audience of water professionals.
Particular areas in which Israel excels most in water management include reuse for irrigation, desalinization, innovation in pipe materials, sensors, control devices, efficient use of water, security and emergency management, said Helena Alegre – senior vice president of the International Water Association and principal investigator at Portugal’s National Laboratory of Civil Engineering – in her address to the group.
“For successful collaboration, there must be this win-win balance, so Israel has to define the topics where it finds a potential interest, where it’s really interested in gaining from IWA,” she told the Post.
Sectors where Israel could benefit from borrowing the knowledge of other participating countries include restoration of water quality after pollution events, and pricing of water, Alegre said.
Recalling her previous visit to Israel 25 years ago, Alegre said that early on in her career, “the best inspiration to become a water professional came from Israel.”
First and foremost, all of the water experts agreed, Israel and the rest of the world must look far ahead.
“During the first 60 years of this country, we built fast, and sometimes we were reckless,” said Yonatan Richter of the Israel Water Authority, who served as convention chairman.
“We have to look at things as far as 60 years and plan accordingly,” he added.
“The estimates are [that] by the year 2025, about half the human population will live in areas that are experiencing water stress,” Daigger told the Post.
“Because of the magnitude of the infrastructure required to manage water, you have to be planning 30 or 40 or 50 years into the future – when we say this is 15 years away, it’s like it’s tomorrow.”
Daigger also suggested that water professionals should stop looking first to surface and ground water as primary water sources.
“What if rather than that, we say, let’s look at reuse first?” he asked the audience.
“There is no such thing as new water,” he said to the Post. “Water simply cycles within the environment. There are those saying that we drink the same water that the dinosaurs drink, and that’s accurate.”
By cooperating to conserve a mutually critical resource like water, Daigger believes, nations have an even greater chance of achieving a more sustainable regional peace.
“There are those who have been saying for quite some time that the wars of the 21st century will be over water,” Daigger said. “But water can be a factor that helps disparate communities and countries to collaborate. It is essential.
We can live many days without food.
Without water, it’s about three days. As water becomes in desperately short supply, the solution is to collaborate.”
An entire panel at the conference was dedicated to this sentiment, analyzing the different ways that Middle Eastern countries could partner to conserve water, and the possible ramifications of such collaboration.
“We can reach cooperation, but at the beginning, it will only be by acceptance of activities the other side is doing,” Shimon Tal, president of the Israel Water Authority and CEO of Tal-Content, told the Post. “When the shortage will become more severe, I think we will cooperate and build a system – there will be no other possibility.”
Tal sees cooperation between Lebanon and Syria occurring easily, as well as a partnership between Israel and Jordan.
And while he doesn’t think that increased participation in International Water Association projects and talks will expressly achieve these partnerships, he does feel that these means will indirectly contribute to such causes.
“I’m not sure that this will create direct cooperation between us and our neighbors, but I think that people all over the world will know much more what Israel thinks and what Israel is doing,” Tal said.
Meanwhile, Doron Merkel of the Water Authority presented research from the Red Sea-Dead Sea Study Management Unit, which encourages cooperation among Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan in taking water from the Red Sea and using a reverse osmosis procedure to generate fresh water, with residual salt emptying into the already extremely saline Dead Sea.
Daniel Reisner, an attorney for Herzog, Fox and Ne’eman and former director of the IDF’s legal branch, said that while Israel and its neighbors should share the existent technologies and narrow the gap in water management abilities, this should not be related to repairing political differences.
“We have the same water source, but there isn’t an equal ability to use it,” Reisner said of the current situation.
“All of the surrounding countries want Israel to establish the technologies and leave them the natural waters, like rivers, because they’re not able to develop the technologies.”
Daigger hopes that as a “global leader” in agricultural irrigation, desalinization and so many other water preservation technologies, Israel will continue to partner with its neighbors for a more sustainable future.
“No one in the region is really as efficient in the use of water in agriculture,” he said. “That’s an area where Israel really stands out.”

By Simona Sikimic
Daily Star staff

Friday, January 21, 2011

BEIRUT: Water scarcity in the region can be channeled for a common good and used to reduce, rather than ignite conflict, an environmental report released Thursday has claimed.

“The Blue Peace: Rethinking Middle East Water” launched at the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Center, proposes radical cooperation between the six concerned states: Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey, and envisages the neighbors setting up a mutual monitoring system to guarantee collaboration and more equal partitioning of resources.

“The social and economic development of nations depends on water availability in terms of quantity and quality,” said Fadi Comair, the president of Mediterranean Network of River Basin Organizations.

“It holds a major place on the diplomatic agenda of the [six] governments,” Comair said.

River flows in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan have been depleted by 50 to 90 percent in the last 50 years alone, while the vital Jordan River, which acts as a water source for five of the concerned countries, has decreased its discharge by over 90 percent from 1960, the report said.

“This is a serious problem,” said Sundeep Waslekar, the president of the India-based think tank Strategic Foresight Group, which coordinated the report’s compilation.

“Especially as water demand is rising and consumption has gone up from [an estimated] 10-15 percent 50 years ago to 37 percent now.”

With consumer requirements predicted to increase to 50-60 percent over the next decade, further pressure will be put on ever-dwindling supplies, he said.

But “hydrodiplomacy” as outlined in the report has the potential to alleviate “conflicts on trans-boundary watercourse between riparian states [which] will intensify more and more, especially in the Middle East,” Comair added.

Some moves toward cooperation have already been made, especially between Syria and Lebanon, which have signed two important accords to partition resources from the Orontes and Nahr al-Kabir rivers.

However, the refusal of Israel and Turkey to sign up to a key U.N. Convention on the use of International Watercourse, which advocates water-sharing, is thought to have impeded progress. Actions taken by Israel, in particular, undermine the prospect of peace, audience members heard.

“In 2006 Israel bombed the dam on the Orontes River, some 300 kilometers from the border,” said Selim Catafago, the president of the Litani Water Authority. “This message, to my understanding, is to all Lebanese to cease construction on the Ibl al-Saqi dam.”

According to the report, the situation is the most alarming in Palestine, where renewable freshwater resources in the shared Mountain Aquifer have fallen by 7 percent since just 1993, while those in the Western Galilee Aquifer have decreased by 15-20 percent in a non-drought season.

“As a result, the calculations made at the time of Oslo Accords and hitherto used by most international organizations [as the base for the Israel-Palestinian peace process] need to be revised downward to provide a realistic formula for water-sharing between Israel and the future Palestinian state,” the report said.

Water appropriation has created a “high stress” situation where the average Palestinian is left living on less than 30 liters of fresh water a day, with the average Lebanese and Jordanian estimated to be surviving on around 60 liters, said Comair. This compares to 350 liter per person per day in Israel.

The report proposes installing a region-wide cap on daily consumption where all people would be allowed to consume no more than 200 liters.

“Who is against the equitable and reasonable use of water?” asked Comair. “We are all human beings, Christians, Muslims, Jews, whites, blacks.”

However, greater internal coordination is needed before larger steps can be taken. The internationally funded report will be launched at the Swiss Parliament next month, and will also be presented to the U.K. and EU Parliaments.

Copyright (c) 2011 The Daily Star

Israeli-Palestinian team to develop clean water solutions

By Gilah Kahn-Hoffmann
October 03, 2010, Israel 21C

Two scientists, one from Israel and one from Nablus in the Palestinian Authority are working together to improve water purification for the region and beyond.

Photo by Dani Machlis.

Aiming for more clean water – Dr. Moshe Herzberg from Ben Gurion University.

Clean water is one of the most vital resources in water-scarce countries like Israel and the Middle East, so it’s no surprise that two scientists – one Israeli and one Palestinian – are now working together to increase the supply throughout the region.

Dr. Moshe Herzberg from Ben-Gurion University (BGU) of the Negev and Prof. Mohammed Saleem Ali-Shtayeh, from the Biodiversity and Environmental Research Center (BERC) in Nablus in the Palestinian Authority have been awarded a Mid East Regional Cooperation (MERC) USAID $650,000 grant for a joint water purification project that will address clean water issues and increase the clean water supply in the region as a whole.

Their project addresses the problems of biofouling of Reverse Osmosis (RO) membranes during reclamation of secondary wastewater. Herzberg explains: "Biofouling is what happens to any surface submerged in water. Take a bath toy that’s been in the water for a few days," he tells ISRAEL21c, explaining that the slimy layer that forms on the surface is the "water-solid interface" that forms where water meets the surface of an object. Microbial communities of bacteria and fungi grow in that interface, also referred to as a matrix, or biofilm.

Now instead of a bath toy, imagine a piece of equipment that filters organic materials and compounds out of sewage or wastewater. On one side, the treated water is perfectly clean, but on the other, active side that is in contact with the smelly stuff, a biofilm forms and builds up over time, adversely affecting performance and necessitating cleaning and replacement of equipment. The cleaning cycles that the filters undergo to remove the biofilm reduce their lifespan and the equipment is very expensive to replace. 

Less energy, more clean water

Oh – ‘Reverse Osmosis’ – that’s "the most easily applicable technology for removal of salts and small organic compounds from water," rendering it safe for irrigation and drinking, adds Herzberg.

The researchers plan to characterize and eventually find novel ways to eradicate different biofilms grown on RO membranes. "If we are able to understand how the biofilm forms and how to reduce its formation on reverse osmosis technology [equipment], we will be able to operate reverse osmosis units for a longer time," says Herzberg.

Herzberg is confident that he and Ali-Shtayeh will achieve that understanding, since the research, he says, is "based on solid hypotheses that will enable us to come up with optimized operating and cleaning conditions for reverse osmosis plants."

The reverse osmosis units will require less maintenance and be able to operate for longer periods. Also, the higher performance will render the whole process more cost-effective. "You will need less energy – membrane buildup and cleanup, equipment, labor – to get more clean water," Herzberg declares.

"These techniques can be applied to increase access to clean water supply in the Middle East, especially in the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Purified secondary wastewater is an immediate resource for irrigation and after RO filtration those waters can be used indirectly for drinking," he adds.

They will also have wider application: "Other applications include any water and wastewater treatment processes that include filtration units such as ultra-micro- and nano-filtration. Also, ways for biofouling control in other systems such as heat-exchangers and water distribution systems could be improved," he tells ISRAEL21c.

Applying research to enhance quality of life

The MERC Program funds collaborative research projects between Israel and its Arab neighbors and has funded activities with participation from Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, the West Bank/Gaza and others. Its goal is to contribute to the development and improvement of the quality of life in the Middle East through the application of research and technology; while at the same time contributing to the peace process by establishing cooperative relationships like this one.

While the five-year collaboration is in its early stages, Herzberg says that "so far it seems to be working well. We already have a PhD student from Nablus who will hopefully do his research at BGU."

In Israel, Herzberg believes that the results of the research should have an almost immediate effect on increasing the country’s supply of clean water. Change will take longer in the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza Strip, however, he warns. "First, tertiary wastewater must be made available from plants that will be constructed, and there are many political and bureaucratic factors to consider," he explains.

Herzberg predicts that Mekorot [Israel's national water company]will be able to use our data within months for better operation of its pilot plants, like the Shafdan Center in Rishon Lezion, the biggest wastewater treatment plant in Israel that treats all the sewage of the Tel Aviv municipality. They have pilot-plants for desalination of wastewater and they have biofilm problems that our findings will enable them to reduce."

In addition to Herzberg and Ali-Shtayeh, the other researchers on the project are Dr. Osnat Gillor (BGU) and Dr. Helen Thanh Nguyen, a grant advisor and assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Herzberg and Gillor are both at the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research which is part of BGU’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research.

Tishrei 20, 5771, 28 September 10 05:11

by Elad Benari, Arutz sheva

(Israelnationalnews.com) Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu signed a decree this past week which declares a plan by the Multimatrix company to build a large wind farm in the northern Golan Heights a national project, according to a report in Globes.

The new farm will be established in an area between Massadeh and Majdal Shams, and will comprise 70 giant turbines capable of an output of 155 megawatts. The total investment in the project is expected to be approximately $400 million. Partnering with Multimatrix in the project is US energy giant AES Corp., which raised the necessary funds to promote the project, and will receive half the profits. Approximately $70 million per year are expected to be sold to Israel Electric Corporation, said the controlling shareholder and CEO of Multimatrix, Uri Omid.

It is expected that construction of the farm will begin within six months, and is expected to be short, with one turbine being installed every three days. This means that the entire farm should be up and running by the second half of 2012. Multimatrix and AES are hoping to obtain approval from the army to set up more huge turbines that will be capable of expanding the farm’s total output to about 200 megawatts.

Israel regularly invests in wind energy. In early August, Green Wind Energy Ltd. announced that it has obtained a permit to build a 14-megawatt wind farm in the Golan Heights. The Green Wind Energy farm will include seven 80-meter turbines, each with a propeller diameter of 95 meters. Each turbine will generate two megawatts of electricity.

While Israel has traditionally focused on solar power, recently it has begun to put more resources into developing its wind energy industry. Israel plans to more than triple its use of wind energy over the next decade, while increasing solar energy production by only 40 percent. 

Omid told Globes regarding the Multimatrix project: “This is the first very large and practical renewable energy project of its kind in Israel, and in the entire Middle East. Both the finance minister and the minister of the environment supported the move, and for good reason: they were impressed that one of the solutions to the expected energy shortage in Israel in the coming years is within reach, and not in the depths of the Mediterranean, without the need for special installations to transport gas, without capital market speculation, and without pollution of any kind.”

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The vehicles, known as the Renault Fluence Z.E. (for zero emissions), look just like normal Renault Fluence sedans, but run solely on electric power.

At first glance, Israel may seem like a strange place to focus EV efforts on, but it makes perfect sense upon closer examination. For starters, the, ahem, geopolitical concerns regarding the country and its petroleum-producing neighbors means that energy independence is crucial for the 7.3 million strong nation. With expensive gas and short driving distances (the entire country is about the size of New Jersey), Israel is also a great test bed for the Better Place battery-swapping stations invented in Israel in partnership with Renault.  For those not near a battery-swap station, charging can take as little as 30 minutes or as long as 8 hours depending on charging equipment. 

Renault EV Prototype Testing In Israel

Read More http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/08/renault-ev-prototype-testing-in-israel/#ixzz0xUNL7OIc