The new water cycle charted by Professor Avner Adin updates the textbooks and offers hope
By: Deborah Jacobi
The puzzling statement in the title is made by Professor Avner Adin from the Soil and Water Department of the Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot, which is part of the Hebrew University, the founder of the Israel Water Association and its former president. According to him, the problem does not lie in the quantity of water but in its quality.
Professor Adin's enormous contribution to the Israeli water system began, at its inception, not only from motives of academic interest and professional ambitions, but also from Zionist motives. As a student at the Technion, younger than most of his fellow students, he had to choose a course of study in the third year of studying environmental engineering. Younger Avner chose the hydraulics major for three reasons: his fondness for mathematics, his love for field work that takes him out of the laboratory and the desk, and the deep inner need to engage in something that will not only advance him personally, but will also allow him to contribute to society. The choice of this major led him, in his military service as a combat engineering officer, to be responsible for all water systems in the army. And from there his social involvement in the issue of water in Israel and around the world gradually developed.
If so, how is there no shortage of water in Israel? When I raise a skeptical eyebrow, he unfolds before me his message on the new water cycle, which includes not only the water sources we are all familiar with, and which worry us about their depletion, but also sea water and wastewater. There are plenty of these, but there is a need for their desalination and purification, areas in which Professor Adin himself is responsible for many solutions and patents.
Who among us did not learn in elementary school about the water cycle or, as it was commonly called, the water cycle. The sun heats all visible bodies of water: seas, rivers and lakes. The water evaporates and rises upwards. The water vapor condenses into rain clouds. Some of the falling rain flows back into the water bodies and some seeps into the ground and joins the groundwater reservoir, which in turn flows into the water bodies or is pumped in wells.
This water cycle has existed since time immemorial, however, says Professor Adin, the cycle has changed in a revolutionary way in industrialized countries in general and in Israel in particular. Part of the change started decades ago when they started reusing industrial wastewater, purifying domestic wastewater and using this effluent for irrigation purposes. This cycle prevents the return of the polluted water to the natural water cycle and leaves the water available for human use.
But in recent years there is a new and almost unlimited source: desalinated sea water. Due to its high quality, the desalinated water is mainly used for drinking and domestic use. Naturally, the water we drank in the cup of coffee at breakfast or the cup of tea at five in the afternoon ends up in the domestic sewer, as does the water from the shower and the water for washing the dishes and washing the clothes. This water comes through the municipal or rural wastewater treatment plant to the effluents that are discharged into streams and the sea or to the sprinklers that irrigate fields. They continue and evaporate from the leaves of the irrigated plants, from the fields, from the streams, from the sea and some of them percolate and reach the groundwater reservoir that is pumped in the wells and thus they join the general water cycle.
I make it difficult for a gentle professor and ask about the price of desalinated water. It turns out that the revolution in the water cycle rests on an economic revolution in the field of water desalination. The price of water desalination today is similar to the price of wastewater treatment, i.e. NIS 2 per cubic meter.
Many criticize the use of desalinated water because its production requires a lot of energy, takes up coastal areas and releases salty water into the sea. But in answer to the question: "Are there any disadvantages to using desalinated water?" Surprises a gentle professor and actually raises a chemical problem. According to him this is one of the cases where "a bride is too beautiful". In the water desalination process, which is carried out using the reverse osmosis method, the dissolved salts are removed by passing them through a selective membrane (membrane) that prevents the passage of salts. The resulting water is therefore poor in the ions that make up the salts, and there are some types of ions that are not found in them at all. However, the World Health Organization determined, following many studies, that magnesium and calcium ions, which are necessary for the proper functioning of the human body, must also reach the body from drinking water, that is, drinking what is known as "hard" water. Such water, which contains a high concentration of ionic substances, causes a decrease in the incidence of heart diseases.
"So if there's no bread they'll eat cakes," I challenge the gentle professor again. Why should they not use desalinated water only for irrigation, while we, the humans, will drink the water of the national carrier or the water of the local wells that will be used less for agricultural purposes. A gentle professor, as he is, gently corrects me: "Plants also need salts (which in agriculture are commonly called minerals) and so does the soil. If it does not contain a sufficient amount of ionic substances, especially calcium and magnesium ions, it loses its stability, crumbles and disappears.
The problem is not only a health problem, adds Professor Edin, but also a technological one. Desalinated water causes corrosion of water pipes made of iron. When undesalinated water, containing a "normal" amount of ionic substances flows through the iron pipes, some of these ionic substances settle on the inner walls of the pipes and form a protective layer. In pipes where desalinated water flows, this protective layer dissolves, or is not formed in the first place and the pipe is damaged by corrosion. This phenomenon is called "red water" because as a result of the corrosion of the iron, reddish iron compounds are formed in the shade of rust.
The solution found by the desalination companies is incredibly simple: flow the desalinated water through a layer of gravel made from the mineral calcite, or calcium carbonate. Some of the mineral dissolves and returns to the desalinated water the calcium ions it lacks. This is a simple, cheap and effective method, but not perfect. Sometimes the desalinated water has too many calcium ions and lacks magnesium ions. The solution to the problem was found by Professor Ori Lahav from the Technion: passing seawater through a column containing a substance that selectively binds magnesium ions. After that, the desalinated water that passed through the calcite and is now too rich in calcium ions is flowed through the same column. Some of the calcium ions bind to the column and release the magnesium ions from it. In this way, desalinated water is obtained which, nevertheless, is not too poor in calcium ions and magnesium ions.
"We came to Zion Goel," I joke, but as I continue to talk with the modest professor, I realize that his work is not over. These days he is establishing a task group in the International Water Association that is preparing to issue a summary document of challenges and solutions in the field of desalinated water quality from an overall systemic perspective. The problem of the lack of fresh water will become in the coming decades one of the most oppressive problems for humanity, and a systemic view of the solutions to it, which will also include energy and environmental aspects, is therefore an urgent and necessary need.
If the ideas of Avner Adin and his colleagues are indeed implemented, perhaps we will all see that the title "There is no shortage of water in Israel" will also be true for the entire world.
Dr. Deborah Jacobi is a member of the educational staff of Hamada, the center for scientific education in Tel Aviv, and a scientific editor at Scientific American Israel.
17 תגובות
For the diagnostician:
"The concentration that is produced as a result of desalination and thrown into the sea will have serious consequences for the animals in the sea." These are your words. Things that are the biggest exaggeration I have ever seen.
How much water is desalinated in the country every year? How much water does the sun "draw" from the sea through evaporation? What is the relationship between them?
I think the ratio between them is something like one in a billion. I don't have a drive to check, but it seems pretty accurate.
In light of this, re-read the quote from your own words, and declare that your exaggeration is not the greatest ever uttered.
The claims regarding unlimited desalination capacity and water recycling in large quantities are extremely problematic. The concentration that is produced as a result of desalination and thrown into the sea will still have serious consequences for the animals in the sea, and currently there is no proper supervision and legislation. Air pollution and the use of expensive energy to implement the desalination process are significant over time. The extensive land seized near the sea for the establishment of the desalination plants destroys landscapes that will never return. The dangers of water being recycled in large quantities have not yet dawned on scientists. Caution in statements and strictness of civil and public bodies is necessary to prevent irreversible damage.
Agree with the magician on almost everything.
And it is important to emphasize that the average annual amount of rain is approximately 6 times greater than the annual consumption.
So pooling flood water in a relatively small amount would have solved the problem of the pretended shortage and the inaction and planning of the tired Minister of Water Affairs.
In addition, a huge amount of energy needed to transfer water from the Sea of Galilee to the south would have been saved. Two birds with one stone, but the minister still does nothing. Flying in illusory and strange worlds. Even those before him did nothing and it is doubtful that in the future there will be a minister who will manage the issue correctly.
And maybe it's all because of the connection between capital and government, and the government gives control over the lives of the citizens to a few tycoons who will count us out and respect the rulers in every way.
The same tycon will provide gas to generate electricity with the electricity desalination plants he owns and he will also control the water corporations and charge exorbitant prices in order to bribe with bonuses those who were in power and gave him permission to take over our lives and tell us when he wants.
Enough of the corruption and syub
There is indeed no shortage of water in the State of Israel. There is enough water in the Mediterranean Sea.
What is missing is money to finance desalination and wastewater treatment. That is why we need to develop a process to produce economic growth that will raise the standard of living of the residents of Israel, and flow more taxes to the government. This will stop money to fund desalination.
And as for agriculture, we need to switch to smart agriculture where the price of 1 kg of product will be much higher than the prices of our vegetables.
You forget the main reason.
If they don't claim that there is such a great shortage of water, how exactly will they justify the illogical price increase that has been happening here in recent years!!!
Hi, for years I have been trying to promote an idea of an effective solution for saving the Dead Sea, saving electricity generation and developing the Jordan River
The idea is simply to stop pumping the Kinneret water. The Kinneret's water flow through the Degania Dam will generate electricity and save the Jordan River and the Dead Sea
This is relatively simple to implement and gives huge development to both Israel and Jordan as well as the Palestinian Authority
Relatively minimal cost for a canal cushion and the discharge of seawater into the Dead Sea. that the damage can be irreversible
I will be happy to respond
Greetings Amos
The missile barrage from Iraq landed in January 1991 and not in the winter of 1991-1992 as the magician wrote.
Still an interesting article.
Is the magician Prof. Dan Zaslavsky by any chance?
He has a lot of ideas in common.
Anyway, agree with the wizard.
for life!
Although some of the data that the "wizard" provides are not accurate, despite the confusion in terms,
in water distribution, water sources and use (in history and in the present),
The principle is correct!
Elsewhere I wrote that "We live in a land that is crossed by a desert
and behave as if we were sitting on the shore of a Swiss lake",
We mean the authorities... and the public,
There is a need for a reorganization of the authorities that are supposed to take care of the important resource,
There is a need to educate the public on the correct and economical use of natural resources in general
and in water in particular,
Saving is not a dirty word but an essential need!
Let's not talk about the corporations that "sting" us with 16% tax (VAT) on water.
which is a matter of time until the government decides to privatize them as well (see the entry of the Veolia company that privatized and is still privatizing municipalities around the world with the help of subsidiaries it is establishing) and then the rates will really rise.
Thanks, Wizard. very interesting. 🙂
There is no reason for hysteria because there is enough water. There is a reason (or maybe reasons) for concern, because the water of the State of Israel is managed in a careless manner and because of the careless management, the careless managers are encouraging unnecessary and harmful desalination with all their might.
And whoever is forced to actively participate in the national intimidation operation, is none other than the sweetest lake we have - Kinneret. That small lake, which makes up less than 5% of the water of the State of Israel, whose water level is of no importance except to mark the level of hysteria, whose upper red line indicates that the water will flow beyond the dam into Jordan, whose red lower line indicates that there was a not terribly successful winter in the Kinneret basin And that the black line indicates that the pipes that pump to the carrier reach there. that's it.
The Kinneret is so unimportant that even if they gave the Jordanians more water and returned the Golan Heights - it would not really change the water balance of the State of Israel.
It's just that everything here is motivated by interests, superstitions and wrong basic concepts, to the point that it is possible to confuse everyone's mind all the time and create hysteria.
How do you create hysteria? Ask the Water Authority of the State of Israel that a girl is crumbling on their website. The Water Ministry did not update the Kinneret level between March 12 and 19. In those days the level of the Sea of Galilee rose by 7 centimeters. Each centimeter is equal to a million cubic meters. 7 million cubic meters were added to the lake for a week (and since the beginning of winter about 160 million plus the flow is tilted). But it did not fit the advertisement that we are drying up and there is no water. So we didn't update. The duck did not move. The one who did update was the Mekorot company. But who looks at Mekorot?
You should actually look at Mekorot, because according to Mekorot, our national water company, we have three large sources of water, and I'm quoting from the Mekorot site: "The mountain aquifer - which stretches under the main mountain avenue, from Nahal Taninim in the north to the Beer Sheva area in the south, and from the south of the mountain in the west to the line The back of the mountain in the east.
The area of the mountain aquifer is about 3,000 square kilometers and its volume is estimated at about 30 billion cubic meters. The water quality in it is very good and therefore it serves as a significant reservoir for drinking water. The amount of water that can be pumped from the mountain aquifer is about 350 million cubic meters of water on a multi-year average."
What Mekorot does not say is that she could have pumped much more water from it. It's just that it prefers to draw from the Kinneret - historically, Mekorot is aimed at the Kinneret, even though the mountain reservoir has ten times more water than the Kinneret.
Right. This is the figure that immediately catches the eye - most of our water is not in the Sea of Galilee, where you can see it, but underground. Where no one sees, neither drills nor cares.
This is, for example, part of the careless handling of the water authority. and of sources.
Our second large reservoir is the coastal aquifer - "a groundwater reservoir located along the coast, from Caesarea in the north to the Gaza Strip in the south. The coastal aquifer covers 2,000 square kilometers and its volume is estimated at about 20 billion cubic meters. This aquifer has several important advantages: it is located In the most populated area in Israel, the water quality is good for drinking and agriculture, and being an underground reservoir there is no evaporation from it.
On the other hand, over-pumping of the coastal aquifer exposes it to the intrusion of salty water from the sea, and its proximity to populated areas endangers the quality of its water as a result of the infiltration of impurities from domestic and industrial sewage. To improve the water balance in the coastal aquifer, Mekorot's water resource management systems allow water from the national carrier to be injected into the coastal aquifer. The amount of water that can be pumped from the coastal aquifer is about 250 million cubic meters on a multi-year average."
Again, what Mekorot doesn't say, that it was possible to pump and preserve the water from the coastal reservoir much better, but Mekorot, no municipality and no government has done it over the years. But pay attention to the figure - 20 billion cubic meters. Five times the Kinneret. I mean, here on the coast, we have 5 Kinneras. I have a Kinneret.
And now we've finally arrived at the Sea of Galilee: "The Sea of Galilee is the lowest freshwater body in the world and one of the five main water sources of the State of Israel. Every year the Sea of Galilee provides about a third of Israel's water consumption, depending on the availability of water that year ranging from 300 to 700 million cubic meters depending on the amount of precipitation .
The area of the Kinneret is 170 square kilometers, its volume is 4.5 billion cubic meters, its maximum depth is 43 meters and the extent of its shores varies between 55 and 60 kilometers, depending on the water level. The volume of water in the upper red line is 4.3 billion cubic meters and in the lower line it is 3.6 billion cubic meters
About 100 million cubic meters are pumped and flowed to the water consumers around the lake and to the Kingdom of Jordan in accordance with the peace agreements, and about 420 million cubic meters on average are pumped by the Mekorot company for the national system."
Wait, you will be asked, and rightly so, if the Kinneret is so small, then why do we take so much water from it?
So. Because this is what we know how to do best - talk about what we see and not about what is there.
Because when the fathers of Zionism came - they thought Europe - of rivers and dead and ignored the groundwater. Did you know that in North Africa there are no rivers and there is no shortage of water because there they know that the water comes from underground?
The situation here is so ridiculous that even with the collection of mistakes and the excessive reliance on the Kinneret, we do not lack water.
As written in Haaretz newspaper:
Every year 164 million cubic meters are wasted from leaks in the pipeline
140 million cubic meters flow into the sea because it is rainwater on the coastal plain that is not collected in a sink
100 million cubic meters is sewage water that we neither purify nor use
100 million cubic meters is purified water that we do not transfer to agriculture, which gives an amazing figure of 500 million cubic meters of waste!
The figure is even more amazing because the entire Israeli consumption is 1,700 million cubic meters.
A third of the amount of Israeli consumption is wasted every year. More than we pump from the Kinneret in peak pumping.
But before we take care of and return the water that we pump and waste in a crooked way, it is also useful to know who uses the water and why. Because it is customary to blame the magnificent Israeli agriculture that it drinks all our water. Absolutely not true. We ourselves, the citizens of the expanded country, drink and shower and wash with most of the water.
Because households use 924 million cubic meters
630-430 million cubic meters irrigate the agriculture that is so convenient to attack and try to eliminate in the name of hysteria
100 million cubic meters for industry
And we give 70 million to Jordanians and Palestinians.
The truth is that we can give easily and anyone who protests against giving water to live in peace - does it in order to sow panic and false dreams. There is enough water for everyone.
Mekorot, which is responsible for about 80% of the water supply, supplied 2008 million cubic meters in 1,500 (according to the company's data). Good water and seats - I mean, even in the available data, the entire amount that is available is still not used and sources only know how to treat the Kinneret, less than half of the mountain reservoir and absolutely not the coastal aquifer.
The hysteria is big, excessive and wasteful.
And all this before we talked about where and how much rain falls in the country. Because we are of course not a desert country but a Mediterranean one. Nine and a half million of the country's ten million inhabitants live in the Mediterranean climate. And the most regular rains according to the multi-year average fall on the coastal plain - where we built all our houses and therefore the water does not seep into the coastal aquifer and flows to the sea. These are the 140 million cubic meters that are wasted every year. They don't go to the sewer - they just flow into the sea. They need to be stored. Cheaper and much wiser in terms of national infrastructure than desalination plants.
But one of the topics discussed here is the water crisis and the tremendous push to pray. As has been written extensively in various places out of a wrong perception of the climate and reality.
Desalination is problematic, expensive, takes up space, energy, heats the environment and produces "soft" water that must be mixed with normal water in order not to eat the iron pipes (the soft water absorbs the iron of the pipes). And in general they are expensive and not very successful. And besides, you really don't need them. Unless you are a franchisee who received permission from the state to produce expensive water that the state fixed and you and I will pay. thanks.
And what about the drought you ask?
Well thank you.
This year is not a drought year. Moreover. This is an average year. It is possible that in the end it will be even better than average, similar to the winter of 1991-1992 when the first rains began to fall only after the first missile barrage from Iraq - on January 17.
In most of the country the multi-year average is fine - in the middle part there are places where it has dropped even more.
Don't look at the duck, go to the Israeli Meteorological Service website, where there is real data. Don't believe ducks and red and black lines. They are designed to sell newspapers. Do you remember what color the headlines of the newspapers in Israel and around the world are made of?
I mean there is a solution and it is not desalination - simply catch and arrange the cities' water - it will cost once and no more energy is needed. And it is possible and worthwhile to start taking care of the mountain reservoir and the coastal aquifer, which together have 20 times more water than the Kinneret.
And you know what, no one has any idea how deep the reservoirs are. All estimates. Because the minimum that should have been done years ago - to drill several hundred test wells throughout the country - was never done.
Agriculture should not be taken care of either - we, the households - are the biggest wasters - agriculture uses mostly waste water.
This technology must not be sold to the Arab enemy!!
Lishi,
This is not a spelling error, you can write from sketcher or sketcher, it's the same word.
Yeshi, that's from Scientific American and I trust them.
Interesting and optimistic - fun to read. I wish the State of Israel and the intensifying water crisis the best of luck.
Please correct the spelling error in the subheading - a sketcher and not a sketcher.
Thanks.