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May 29, 2013 / in Blog Articles

Next month, Israel Desalination Enterprises’ Sorek Desalination Plant will provide up to 25 million liters of potable water daily . At full capacity it will be the largest desalination plant of its kind in the world. Sea water is drawn from the Mediterranean Sea about 2 kilometers off the coast and into a land based RO (reverse osmosis) plant where the salt will be extracted prior to the water being sent to Tel Aviv. Israel has fast tracked the building of RO plants because of a severe seven year drought which ended during the winter of 2011-12. Prior to the end of the drought the water level in the Sea of Galilee (a major source of fresh water) had sunk to dangerously low levels but now it is almost back to full capacity after the good rains over the past two wet seasons. Once the new Sorek  RO facility is commissioned, it will result in a total of almost 450 cubic meters of water per year of desalinated water being provided which is 60 percent of Israel’s total potable water needs. This will rise to 80 percent in 2014 after expansion of other RO facilities. The result? Now there are fears that there will be too much water. Costly water at that. Some environmentalists question whether the process is worth its monetary and environmental costs. In Israel 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 doesn’t come with such a price tag. Former long-term planner at Israel’s Water Authority and a critic of Israel’s current desalination policy, Giora Shaham said that facilities 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 far too high. As discussed in yesterday’s blog, conservation with waste water treatment, water reuse and recycling are the first options.Filcon Filters together with its partners will provide all the information you need to know about desalination. And when it comes to filtration problems Filcon, being southern Africa’s leading liquid filtration company, provides clear solutions.