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| There is a Severe Shortage of Water for Domestic Use in Israel |
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There is a severe shortage of some 400 million cubic meter of water for home, agricultural and industrial consumption in Israel. This according to M.K. Nitzan Horowitz who took part in a Shenkar conference dealing with water and sewage treatment technologies, initiated by Prof. Samuel Kenig, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Head of the Chemical Engineering Department. The conference was also attending by top experts in the field of water economy in Israel.
Prof. Kenig surveyed the issue stating that "the total amount of water available today for the State of Israel reaches 1800 million cubic meters a year. Some 600 million cubic meters comes from the Kinneret and an additional 600 million cubic meters are underground aquifer water. Some 300 million cubic meters a year are treated water for agriculture, another 150 million cubic meters are desalinated water and the balance comes from various other sources.
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From right: M.K. Nitzan Horowitz, Prof. Chaim Sheindorf, Dr. Amos Bic,
Prof. Samuel Kenig, Prof. Amotz Weinberg
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Out of the total amount of water, some 600 million cubic meters a year are designated for domestic consumption, some 1300 million cubic meters for agriculture, another 150 million cubic meters go for industrial consumption, another hundred million cubic meters a year are committed to Jordan and 50 million cubic meters for the Palestinian Authority. All together this sums up to 22000 million cubic meters a year, which created a huge deficit in the balance of water reaching 400 million cubic meters a year, over 25% of the entire water source of the State of Israel. Due to this large deficit an excess amount of water is being pumped from the Sea of Galilee and the underground aquifers causing a decline in the level of the water in the Sea of Galilee and salination of the aquifers due to penetration of sea water.
In order to find a suitable solution to the huge deficit in drinkable water there are several plans to increase sources of water, for instance to increase treated water by 150 million cubic meters a year, to a total of 450 million cubic meters and increasing the desalination system of seawater by another 600 million cubic meters a year, to a total of 750 million cubic meter of desalinated water by the year 2020.
It is obvious that the solution for the deficit of the water balance in Israel is mainly through desalination of seawater.
Desalination of seawater in such large quantities raises numerous problems such as chemical stability of desalinated water, the addition of nutrients, seawater pollution as a result of usage of chemicals throughout the desalination process, and influence on the environment as a result of the return of concentrated salinated water to the sea.
"The short term solution is treatment and usage of industrial waste water that can be treated, in order to re-use it in industry for cooling purposes and steam production. This would result in the conservation of many hundreds of million cubic meters of water a year and would in this way solve the negative balance of water that Israel suffers from", Professor Kenig concluded.
In Shenkar's Department of Chemical Engineering there is a study track for specialization in water technology "Water Tech". The courses taught for this special track are: treatment of water for domestic use, treatment of water for industrial use, treatment of industrial sewage and hazardous waste, chemo-physical processes for treatment of sewage and seawater desalination. Aspects of prevention and treatment of air pollution and solid waste are also dealt with. The department has an advanced laboratory for treating water and sewage.
The development of environmental protection technologies and particularly water and sewage technology, are the principal challenges that chemical engineers must face in the 21st century.
For details: Prof. Samuel Kenig: samkenig@shenkar.ac.il
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