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Israel CP/SQ solves Desal

Israel Solves Desalination

BEN SALES May 30, 2013With desalination, a once unthinkable water surplus is possible. The Times of Israel. http://www.timesofisrael.com/with-desalination-a-once-unthinkable-water-surplus-is-possible/. Accessed 7/16/14. Writer for The Israel Times

ALMACHIM, Israel (JTA) – As construction workers pass through sandy corridors between huge rectangular buildings at this desalination plant on Israel’s southern coastline, the sound of rushing water resonates from behind a concrete wall. FREE SIGN UP! Drawn from deep in the Mediterranean Sea, the water has flowed through pipelines reaching almost 4,000 feet off of Israel’s coast and, once in Israeli soil, buried almost 50 feet underground. Now, it rushes down a tube sending it through a series of filters and purifiers. After 90 minutes, it will be ready to run through the faucets of Tel Aviv. Set to begin operating as soon as next month, Israel Desalination Enterprises’ Sorek Desalination Plant will provide up to 26,000 cubic meters – or nearly 7 million gallons – of potable water to Israelis every hour. When it’s at full capacity, it will be the largest desalination plant of its kind in the world. “If we didn’t do this, we would be sitting at home complaining that we didn’t have water,” said Raphael Semiat, a member of the Israel Desalination Society and professor at Israel’s Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. “We won’t be dependent on what the rain brings us. This will give a chance for the aquifers to fill up.” The new plant and several others along Israel’s coast are part of the country’s latest tactic in its decades-long quest to provide for the nation’s water needs. Advocates say desalination — the removal of salt from seawater – could be a game-changing solution to the challenges of Israel’s famously fickle rainfall. Instead of the sky, Israel’s thirst may be quenched by the Mediterranean’s nearly infinite, albeit salty, water supply. Until the winter of 2011-12, water shortages were a dire problem for Israel; the country had experienced seven straight years of drought beginning in 2004. The Sea of Galilee (also known as Lake Kinneret), a major freshwater source and barometer of sorts for Israel’s water supply, fell to dangerous lows. The situation got so severe that the government ran a series of commercials featuring celebrities, their faces cracking from dryness, begging Israelis not to waste any water. Even as the Sea of Galilee has returned almost to full volume this year, Israeli planners are looking to desalination as a possible permanent solution to the problem of drought. Some even anticipate an event that was once unthinkable: a water surplus in Israel. Israel Desalination Enterprises opened the first desalination plant in the country in the southern coastal city of Ashkelon in 2005, following success with a similar plant in nearby Cyprus. With Sorek, the company will own three of Israel’s four plants, and 400 plants in 40 countries worldwide. The company’s U.S. subsidiary is designing a new desalination plant in San Diego, the $922 million Carlsbad Desalination Project, which will be the largest desalination plant in America. In Israel, desalination provides 300 million cubic meters of water per year – about 40 percent of the country’s total water needs. That number will jump to 450 million when Sorek opens, and will hit nearly 600 million as plants expand in 2014, providing up to 80 percent of Israel’s potable water. Like Israel’s other plants, Sorek will work through a process called Seawater Reverse Osmosis that removes salt and waste from the Mediterranean’s water. A prefiltration cleansing process clears waste out of the flow before the water enters a series of smaller filters to remove virtually all the salt. After moving through another set of filters that remove boron, the water passes through a limestone filter that adds in minerals. Then, it enters Israel’s water pipes. Semiat says desalination is a virtually harmless process that can help address the water needs prompted by the world’s growing population and rising standard of living. “You take water from the deep sea, from a place that doesn’t bother anyone,” he said. But sesalination is not without its critics. Some environmentalists question whether the process is worth its monetary and environmental costs. One cubic meter of desalinated water takes just under 4 kWh to produce – that’s the equivalent of burning 40 100-watt light bulbs for one hour to produce the equivalent of five bathtubs full of water. Freshwater doesn’t have that cost. Giora Shaham, a former long-term planner at Israel’s Water Authority and a critic of Israel’s current desalination policy, said that factories like Sorek could be a waste because if there is adequate rainfall the desalination plants will produce more water than Israel needs at a cost that is too high. Then, surplus water may be wasted, or international bodies like the United Nations could pressure Israel to distribute it for free to unfriendly neighboring countries, Shaham said. “There was a long period of drought where there wasn’t a lot of rain, so everyone was in panic,” Shaham said. “Instead of cutting back until there is rain, they made decisions to produce too much.” Fredi Lokiec, an executive vice president at the Sorek plant, says the risks are greater without major desalination efforts. Israel is perennially short on rainfall, and depending on freshwater could further deplete Israel’s rivers. “We’ll always be in the shadow of the drought,” Lokiec said, but drawing from the Mediterranean is like taking “a drop from the ocean.” Some see a water surplus as an opportunity. Orit Skutelsky, water division manager at the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, says desalinated water could free up freshwater to refill Israel’s northern streams and raise the level of the Sea of Galilee. “There’s no way we couldn’t have done this,” she said of desalination. “It was the right move. Now we need to let water flow again to the streams.”

 

Israel’s Model Can solve the Water Crisis

Karin Kloosterman March 20, 2014. Can Israel solve the Californian Water Crisis?. Israel21c. http://www.israel21c.org/environment/water-confident-israel-can-dry-californias-tears/. Accessed 7/16/14. Karin Kloosterman lives in Jaffa, Israel. She is a journalist, writer and blogger who focuses on the environment and clean technology from Israel and the Middle East. Published in hundreds of newspapers around the world, Karin also writes for the Huffington Post and Green Prophet.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently offered to help California overcome its extreme drought –– affecting about two-thirds of its 38 million residents — using Israeli science, water conservation and desalination technology. The Israel Water Association, a non-profit organization founded to help Israeli water companies and society deal with water issues, will host a one-day annual conference on March 24 in Ramat Gan to explore such possibilities for outsiders. Californians are most welcome to the sessions, which will be in English and Hebrew. What makes Israel and California different and how can Israel help? Rain dancing optional Israel has four desalination plants in operation along the Mediterranean Sea, with a fifth plant to come online in Ashdod. But desalination is only part of the story, says Avraham Israeli, president of the Israel Water Association. In California, he says, one important difference is that treated wastewater gets dumped back into the sea. This water may not be good for drinking but it’s perfectly good, even superior, to fresh drinking water for agriculture, as it has some added nutrients. Using a two-system approach with pipes for both gray water and drinking water, Israeli farmers irrigate crops with gray water even in desert areas with practically no rain at all. Israel, he says, is now pushing 75 percent wastewater reuse and aiming for 90%. No water from Israel’s treatment plants gets discharged into the sea. The missing numbers can be accounted for from sewer overflow in the winter months. “This could work in California if the infrastructure was built,” Israeli says. “In principle, they have to change [to] the attitude that treated water is safe and that it is a resource especially in such a year with severe drought. They invest huge amounts of money bringing water from the Colorado River for agriculture. “Treated water could save them a lot of money,” he tells ISRAEL21c. Desalination, he points out, “is a measure of coping with lack of water. It is more expensive than reclaimed water. First, treat sewage and reuse.” Technologies that support energy savings Israel’s technology solutions ease the energy burdens on wastewater reuse. Companies like Mapal Energy, Aqwise and Emefcy can help enormously in places like California, Israeli says. California has already started working with Israel on water. Israel’s IDE Technologies is building the largest seawater desalination plant in the Western hemisphere, north of San Diego. To be finished in 2016, it is expected to supply 50 million gallons of potable water a day. Three smaller desalination plants have opened in California, with more than a dozen proposed. Israeli says we have to wait until the end of the year to see whether 2014 will go down in history as the worst year for rainfall. “But as far back as I remember, as a kid working in the field crops in the kibbutz, I have never seen a drought like this. I don’t remember a phenomenon where I didn’t see rain from mid-December to mid-March.” Israel’s refusal to be dependent on the rain started with first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s visionary construction of the country’s national water carrier back in the 1950s. This enabled the state to build on a lean model and scale up water recycling as needed. And scale up it did: Over the last 10 years, Israel began to build major desalination projects seaside. By 2013, the country declared that it had beaten the drought. Even this year, which may break the driest-ever records, you won’t find Israelis washing their clothes once a week nor will they be withholding showers for their cars or themselves as some folks are doing in California.

Israel Desalination Solves Middle East Water Conflicts

The Associated Press | May 31, 2014Israel's desalination program averts future water crises. HAARETZhttp://www.haaretz.com/life/nature-environment/1.596270. Accessed 7/16/14
Disputes over water have in the past sparked war, and finding a formula for dividing shared water resources has been one of the "core" issues in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Jack Gilron, a desalination expert at Ben-Gurion University, said Israel should now use its expertise to solve regional water problems. "In the end, by everybody having enough water, we take away one unnecessary reason that there should be conflict," he said. Israel has already taken some small steps in that direction. Last year, it signed an agreement to construct a shared desalination plant in Jordan and sell additional water to the Palestinians. Israel's advances with desalination could help it provide additional water to the parched West Bank, either through transfers of treated water or by revising existing arrangements to give the Palestinians a larger share of shared natural sources. "Desalination, combined with Israel's leadership in wastewater reuse, presents political opportunities that were not available even five years ago," said Gidon Bromberg, the Israel director of Friends of the Earth Middle East, an environmental advocacy group.