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In an old Middle Eastern curse, enemies are told to drink from the sea. Cursed with water-shortage problems, Israel has pioneered desalination solutions that are changing the world. From manufacturing China's largest desalination plant and smaller ones on Caribbean islands, to watering its own agricultural industry, Israel's desalination business is a story that started at the founding of the state.
Today Israel's award-winning desalination companies are quenching the thirst of dry nations, and are challenged by today's environmental questions to provide greener options for tomorrow.
Desalination is a process that removes salts and minerals from otherwise undrinkable sea or saline water. With about 70 percent of the world covered in water, and more than 90% of it saltwater, even the water-rich United States finds itself in need of desalination solutions in California. And Israel is there to help.
The biblical Book of Exodus relates how the ancient Israelite leader Moses was empowered to turn bitter water sweet for drinking. Wind the tape forward to the 1950s, when Israel's technological progress in desalination was catalyzed by founding father David Ben-Gurion, who saw desalination as part of Israel's destiny.
Over the last few thousand years, nothing has changed: To survive and thrive, Israelis still need a source for fresh drinking water.
Israel's major foray into desalination began with IDE Technologies - known as Israel Desalination Engineering when it was government-owned - which has built more than 400 desalination plants in some 40 countries, from Caribbean islands to the United States, to mammoth plants in China and Israel. The company is headquartered in Kadima.
Every day, IDE plants produce about two million cubic meters of potable water for the world to use, and its R&D staff is investigating and implementing greener solutions for an industry not known for its environmentalism.
Early experiments in Eilat
Israel's desalination story started with a "crazy" scientist and local legend, Prof. Alexander Zarchin, who headed a research group that proposed a process called vacuum freezing vapor compression (VFVC), which eventually was put into practice in the Israeli Red Sea city of Eilat. The idea was to force water into its three forms - vapor, solid and liquid - pull the salt-free ice out of the mixture and melt it.
Unfortunately, this very secretive project failed. The problem with VFVC, says IDE executive VP of special projects Fredi Lokiec, was that it required too much space and too specific maintenance temperatures to contain the vapor phase. Although the process was much less energy intensive than reverse osmosis (RO), now the most commonly used system for desalination, it wasn't feasible on a large scale.
Eventually Zarchin joined other innovators, such as Israeli-American Prof. Sydney Loeb, in pioneering the artificial membranes that form the basis of RO. Water is passed through this membrane to filter out minerals and other large molecules.
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