Freshwater from the sun
Israel is an undisputed leader in providing desalination plants, equipment, novel technology and know-how for removing salt from water. Israeli company IDE Technologies has installed hundreds of desalination plants around the world to help parched regions make sea and brackish water drinkable.
While IDE is making inroads in becoming more environmentally and economically viable -- its new plant in China, for instance, runs on some of the waste heat produced by a power plant -- there is still much to be done to make desalination technologies accessible for the world’s neediest citizens, especially in inland locations in the Middle East and Africa.
Thanks to funding from Swiss philanthropist Samuel Josefowitz, a very successful new model for desalinating water in poor regions like Africa has been developed in Israel. Josefowitz chose Israel for its expertise in making water solutions that work.
And the result is a new kind of desert oasis powered by the sun. A full system unit uses solar energy, at a fraction of what’s used in other current models, to power the pumps of a desalination unit that can create clean water as well as wastewater for secondary crops (usually grown as a subsidiary food source for home consumption). Israeli researchers from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Central Arava R&D developed the system, which can be custom-engineered for each situation.
The new innovation is now up and running at a quarter-acre test site near Hatzeva in the Arava Valley of Israel, south of the Dead Sea. This basin is very dry, and currently agriculture there uses brackish groundwater from aquifers. At the test site, the researchers focused on increasing efficiency so that fewer solar panels would be needed to drive the desalination system, which can run on varying water salinities and thereby nourish different kinds of crops.
Until now, desalination plants have been prohibitively expensive for less-developed nations. They take an enormous amount of electricity to run and need to be built near the grid -- usually far from where micro- farms (which make up a large proportion of the agriculture of developing nations) are located.
The new Israeli solution created by Messalem and Andrea Ghermandi of the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research at Ben-Gurion University, with Rivka Offenbach and Shabtai Cohen from Central Arava R&D, is an engineered oasis for solar desalination and arid land agriculture.
The breakthrough here was to make the system more economical, and we've done this using nanofiltration cleverly. It needs less energy, and we can use solar energy. Our system is compatible with electricity but is based on the premise that it can be used in poor countries, in places where you don't have an electricity source –– as a standalone system," Messalem concludes.
While IDE is making inroads in becoming more environmentally and economically viable -- its new plant in China, for instance, runs on some of the waste heat produced by a power plant -- there is still much to be done to make desalination technologies accessible for the world’s neediest citizens, especially in inland locations in the Middle East and Africa.
Thanks to funding from Swiss philanthropist Samuel Josefowitz, a very successful new model for desalinating water in poor regions like Africa has been developed in Israel. Josefowitz chose Israel for its expertise in making water solutions that work.
And the result is a new kind of desert oasis powered by the sun. A full system unit uses solar energy, at a fraction of what’s used in other current models, to power the pumps of a desalination unit that can create clean water as well as wastewater for secondary crops (usually grown as a subsidiary food source for home consumption). Israeli researchers from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Central Arava R&D developed the system, which can be custom-engineered for each situation.
The new innovation is now up and running at a quarter-acre test site near Hatzeva in the Arava Valley of Israel, south of the Dead Sea. This basin is very dry, and currently agriculture there uses brackish groundwater from aquifers. At the test site, the researchers focused on increasing efficiency so that fewer solar panels would be needed to drive the desalination system, which can run on varying water salinities and thereby nourish different kinds of crops.
Until now, desalination plants have been prohibitively expensive for less-developed nations. They take an enormous amount of electricity to run and need to be built near the grid -- usually far from where micro- farms (which make up a large proportion of the agriculture of developing nations) are located.
The new Israeli solution created by Messalem and Andrea Ghermandi of the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research at Ben-Gurion University, with Rivka Offenbach and Shabtai Cohen from Central Arava R&D, is an engineered oasis for solar desalination and arid land agriculture.
The breakthrough here was to make the system more economical, and we've done this using nanofiltration cleverly. It needs less energy, and we can use solar energy. Our system is compatible with electricity but is based on the premise that it can be used in poor countries, in places where you don't have an electricity source –– as a standalone system," Messalem concludes.