The export of Israel’s water industry is referred to domestically as “The Golden Fountain”. According to the country’s Institute of Export and International Cooperation, it serves as the major factor in implementing a government directive of June 2006, which aimed to make Israel one of the world’s leading developers and exporters of advanced water technologies.
Marking International Water Day on March 22, David Artzi, chairman of the Institute, said that Israel already exports advanced irrigation technologies to many countries, aimed at saving water while increasing yields.
Israel exports desalination plants, filtering systems, new technologies regarding sewage treatment, recycling and automatic monitoring systems for inspecting the quality of water. Artzi said 150 companies in Israel are engaged in water technologies, and many of them export their systems to countries throughout the world.
An innovative new Israeli device instantly purifies contaminated water. The Sulis Personal Purification System (PPS) takes all the ingredients needed to transform dirty water into clean water - whether for stranded hikers, soldiers in the field, or victims of disasters - miniaturising the technology to fit into the top of a cork that can be plugged into virtually any size bottle, container or tap.
Yossi Sandak, ceo of Watersheer, the Israeli company that has developed the Sulis PPS, says that more than 1.6 million children under the age of five die each year in the undeveloped world from drinking untreated water. “We provide people with clean drinking water,” Sandak claims. The Sulis unit is lightweight and small - 10 grams, 2.7 inches (7cm) - and is designed to fit onto most universal bottles. According to Sandak’s partner, Ron Shani, the founder, chairman and vice president of Watersheer’s R&D division, the Sulis system treats water from a biological and chemical standpoint.
Shani explains the idea is to create a very simple device. There are many players in the survival market, but they have solutions that are complicated and expensive. “They’ll do the job but you need a lot of sequences,” he says, adding that with Sulis, the device is simple, without the need to have an additional energy source.
“Anybody can do it - in a minute, one turns undrinkable water to pure drinking water,” says Sandak, adding that the company is looking for investors in order to set up a production plant in Sderot, a city in the northern Negev in Israel. He explains that the Sulis system will cost no more “than a large coffee and cake at Starbucks”. One Sulis cork can purify 1,000 litres of water before being replaced.
The treatment of waste water is a necessary but expensive process that is in constant need of improvement. Three Israeli companies have developed technologies ranging from basic bacteria treatments to sophisticated electro-chemical systems that are improving the process of treating waste water at a higher quality for less money.
Israel holds the world’s record in water recycling: the country recycles 70-75 per cent of its waste water. Professor Noah Galil of the Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, who is also president of the Israel Water Association, explains that the Israeli government provides significant resources to support research that will help make the country the world’s leading expert on the topic. In an interview for Israel 21c, he said that Israel is now “in the middle of a mini-revolution when it comes to the level of quality at which we can treat water today”.
One of the companies helping to spur this revolution is Aqwise Wise Water Technologies, which has developed a breakthrough technology for treatment at biological cleaning plants, noting that 98 per cent of waste water treatment plants treat biological waste as opposed to chemical waste, according to Galil.
Aqwise’s technologies are biomass carriers, 12 millimetres in diameter, that increase the surface area in biological reactors at water treatment plants by two to three times their original capacity.
In the world of waste water treatment, a large surface area is important for the growth of bacteria that are attached to the contaminated particles in the waste during the first step of treatment, as a means of separating the contaminated particles from the water. As the bacteria hit new surfaces, they automatically divide and grow, consuming contaminated particles in their wake.
Using a process called AGAR (Attached Growth Airlift Reactor), Aqwise inserts hundreds of its recyclable plastic biomass carriers into a biological plant, allowing both the rate at which contamination is collected from the water and the amount that is collected to increase. According to Aqwise ceo and president Eytan Levy, Aqwise has patented this technology worldwide and is already operating water treatment plants in Israel, the US, India, Australia, several west European countries, New Zealand, Japan and Latin America.
“The reason for the technology’s popularity is that the AGAR process allows water treatment plants to expand without having to build costly new infrastructures,” Levy explains, adding that his company is selling solutions which cost about one-third of the conventional treatments, which means significant savings for a municipality or a manufacturing plant.
Another company that improves the quality of water is TreaTec 21, which has developed an electro-flocculation system to speed up the settling process of waste water. Settling begins after the bacteria has done its work and at this stage, the heavy suspended particles begin a slow drift to the bottom of the basin. The natural process works slowly, requiring treatment plants to have large basins to simultaneously handle the accumulation of incoming waste water and the water already undergoing treatment.
TreaTec has developed an electro-chemical process in which metal electrodes in the water release positively charged electrons that attract the negatively charged particles pulling them to the bottom of the basin. The entire process is conducted without the use of added chemicals, which have to be removed from the water before the treatment is complete, according to Raphael Nevo, a founder of TreaTec.
Nevo estimates that the electro-chemical process reduces a plant’s operating costs by 15 per cent. “Since water is now a product with a price, every cent counts and we are saving between two and six cents for every cubic metre of water.”
