Technion

The scarcity of water

The seawater desalination plant in Ashkelon, Israel. (photo from © VID)

The Consulate General of Israel in Toronto and Western Canada marked World Water Day on March 22 with a webinar entitled “Squeezing Water from a Stone.” Dr. Alex Furman of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and Dr. Roy Brouwer of the University of Waterloo focused on Israeli and Canadian perspectives of water conservation and management.

Furman, director of the Stephen and Nancy Grand Water Research Institute at Technion, provided an overview of water management in Israel, describing how a land that is 60% desert – and uses more than 100% of its water – still has water left for use.

“The issue of water scarcity in the future is going to grow as the population grows and we need more water to feed people and for agriculture,” Furman said.

Israel’s population, which has expanded tenfold in the past 75 years, continues to climb. Further, its Western standard of living, including such things as daily showers, presents a further strain on the country’s water supply.

Israel recognized the need for innovation in this area several decades ago. Starting in the 1980s, it began treating wastewater for reuse in agriculture and, in the 2000s, the country started major desalination projects. Desalinated water now constitutes a large amount of the water consumed in Israel, but is not a completely win-win scenario. For example, a detrimental consequence of desalination is that the process also removes essential minerals, such as magnesium.

Another area where Israel is taking the lead is in water-saving technology, such as drip irrigation. Agricultural use of water in Israel has decreased in the past 30 years, a period over which agricultural production increased.

“Instead of irrigating the land, we irrigate the plant. Drip irrigation is providing water for what the plant needs. It’s not the amount of water that is important but the precision in how water is applied,” Furman said.

Concurrently, Furman added, Israelis are doing more to reduce water usage in the home, and the country has developed educational campaigns to inform its citizenry on ways to minimize water consumption.

“We are a very fast-growing country that requires a lot of water and requires the development of new water resources at all times,” Furman said.

Brouwer, an economics professor with an academic interest in water resources, highlighted the broader need for collective international partnership in looking at solutions for water issues through interdisciplinary cooperation, policy expertise and innovation.

“Water disregards boundaries and so must we,” he said, employing the motto of his department at the University of Waterloo.

The working definitions of water security, as put forward by the United Nations, Brouwer explained, are to have stable, peaceful and reliable access to adequate quantities and acceptable quality water. This, in turn, should sustain livelihoods, human well-being, socioeconomic development, protection from pollution and other water disasters, and preservation of ecosystems.

“From an economic point of view,” he said, “we need water to produce all kinds of things.”

As examples, Brouwer showed how much water is needed for basic clothing items: 10,000 litres of water are used to produce a kilogram of cotton, which, therefore, means 2,500 litres are required to make a 250-gram T-shirt and 8,000 litres for an 800-gram pair of blue jeans. For a morning cup of coffee, the equivalent of 1,000 cups of water are needed – from growing the bean, processing it and transporting it to the consumer.

Pressures on the international water supply are further exacerbated as countries such as China, Brazil and India achieve a higher standard of living and demand more goods like Western clothing and coffee.

“We expect that water stress will continue into the future,” Brouwer said, noting that two billion people in the world currently live in areas where water is scarce, including in the Middle East and in Northern Africa.

Global demand for water is, according to Brouwer, expected to grow one percent per year until 2050. By that time, 45% of global output would come from countries experiencing water scarcity. Tel Aviv, along with Sao Paulo, Cape Town and Karachi, is among the cities in the world most at risk of experiencing water shortages.

In a chart, Brouwer showed the skewed distribution of water usage around the world – from the average American, who uses 156 gallons per day to a French person who uses 76, an Indian at 38 and a Malian at three. Canada is the second-largest consumer of water per capita in the world. The average Israeli consumes 40% less water than their Canadian counterpart.

In his final remarks, Brouwer said the widely held view of water abundance in Canada may be a misperception when water quality and access to clean and safe drinking water are taken into consideration.

He concluded that water has value, but that its price is not reflective of its true value. Attention, he said, should be paid to both increasing water supply and policies that reduce water demand, and that water pricing is one way to raise awareness for essential water services.

Technion Canada partnered with the consulate on the World Water Day initiative.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Making hydrogen from sunlight

Avigail Landman, right, and Rawan Halabi with an experimental prototype device. (photo from Ashernet)

Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a prototype system for efficient and safe production of hydrogen using only solar energy. Published in the journal Joule, the study was led by Avigail Landman, a doctoral student in the Grand Technion Energy Program, together with Rawan Halabi, a master’s student from the faculty of materials science and engineering, under the joint guidance of Technion and University of Porto (Portugal) professors. The system contains a tandem cell solar device. Some of the sun’s radiation is absorbed in the upper layer, which is made of semi-transparent iron oxide. The radiation that is not absorbed in this layer passes through it and is subsequently absorbed by a photovoltaic cell. Together, the two layers provide the energy needed to decompose the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The innovation is a continuation of the theoretical breakthrough by the Technion research team presented in a March 2017 article in Nature Materials. Hydrogen is a highly sought-after material in many areas of our lives and, today, most of the world’s hydrogen is produced from natural gas, but this process emits carbon dioxide, whose environmental damage is well known.

Armstrong lecture

Buzz Aldrin addresses the 2016 session of the International Space University at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. (photo from Technion via Ashernet)

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon; he was followed by Buzz Aldrin, while the third member of the team, Michael Collins, orbited the moon in the expedition’s command module.

On July 26, Aldrin addressed the 2016 session of the International Space University at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. Aldrin serves as chancellor of the ISU and, at present, the ISU’s summer program is being held at the Technion.

“We were given an opportunity to land on the moon, and the opportunity became a landmark event that changed the history of mankind,” said Aldrin in his lecture. “Four hundred thousand people were involved in the success of this mission and a half billion people were watching us making history,” he added. “When we returned from there, we were greeted as heroes, but the world cheered not only us but what we represented – conquering the impossible.”

Looking beyond the moon, Aldrin would like to see humans having a permanent presence on Mars by 2040 – to this end, he founded the Buzz Aldrin Space Institute in Florida.

Drought stress takes toll

A July 2014 Planet Labs satellite image of a reservoir in California’s Lake County that supplies water to nearby Yolo County. In a non-drought year, according to Planet Labs, the visible water would cover roughly twice the area as it does in this picture. (photo from Planet Labs via Wikimedia Commons)

California headlines this month scream “water shortage” – but the shortage is not limited to the western United States. According to a recent report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, while the demand for freshwater resources is increasing, the supply remains constant and many regions are starting to feel the pressure. The report states that water managers in 40 of 50 states expect water shortages in some portion of their states within the next 10 years.

Amid this grave prognosis, a new Israeli research project might make the Jewish state an important part of the solution.

In what is arguably one of the most innovative water research consortiums to date, researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Australia’s Monash University are working to develop “water-sensitive cities.” The description for the project, which is funded by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), says that water-sensitive cities adopt and combine decentralized and centralized water management solutions to deliver water security. The data gathered from the project may be used to support development of urban master plans in cities in Israel and around the world.

Researchers are grouped into teams, each focusing on a different aspect of creating water-sensitive cities.

Eran Friedler, senior research fellow and head of the Water Forum Project at Technion, leads a team whose objective is to develop a holistic vision for water-sensitive cities in Israel encompassing scientific, economic and societal aspects, and accounting for the potential effects of global warming on temperatures and rainfall regimes. The analysis seeks to quantify the effect of urbanization and changing urban texture on storm water harvesting potential.

Evyatar Erell, a professor in the Bona Terra Department of Man in the Desert at BGU, is responsible for water-sensitive urban planning and design. He explained that his role is to examine conventional hydrological planning of cities and to see how it can be improved. This means reducing impermeable surfaces (sidewalks, parking lots, driveways, etc.) in favor of more permeable surfaces, sometimes innovative ones, such as green roofs or the infusion of small bits of garden along footpaths.

“We are trying to determine how to use water as effectively as possible, to maximize its benefits to pedestrians, reduce energy consumption by our buildings, and ensure environmental sustainability,” said Erell.