Product: The World’s Largest Water Desalination Plant Company: IDE Technologies Start of Development: 2000
An arid country such as Israel that is typified by frequent and consecutive years of drought, cannot rely solely on natural water sources. The process of seawater desalination negates the dependence on rain, and facilitates the rehabilitation of natural water sources and lowering of water costs.
The Israeli company IDE Technologies is regarded as a world leader in the field of desalination. Since 1965, the company has constructed more than 400 desalination plants in over 40 countries around the world, with an accumulated daily capacity in excess of 2 million cubic meters.
In Israel, IDE operates 3 of the 5 desalination plants located along the country’s coast. Together, the five plants supply approximately 80 percent of the country’s consumption of water for home, agricultural and industrial use. One of these is the Sorek Desalination Plant, considered the largest in the world.
IDE’s Sorek Plant, completed in 2013, is an unprecedented technological masterpiece. The plant is based on technology that uses reverse osmosis (SWRO), the world’s most advanced desalination technology. Several pioneering technologies were combined in the plant, the main one being the use of 16-inch diameter membranes instead of the 8-inch diameter customary elsewhere, and their alignment in a vertical position instead of the traditional horizontal. The result is a saving in space and a streamlining of the desalination process.
The advocate of the idea to alter the membranes’ size and positioning is Dr. Boris Lieberman, the company’s CTO. His simple yet brilliant proposal was initially regarded as rebellious and too complex to implement, however the company decided to proceed with trials. Tried for the first time ever during construction of the Sorek Desalination Plant, the technology demonstrated a saving of approximately 30 percent in the space required for desalination.
Furthermore, the innovative technology yields a saving in costs and energy consumption and also increases the plant’s daily water output that currently stands today at approximately 150 million cubic meters. The Sorek Desalination Plant has set a new standard of water prices in Israel, among the lowest in the world per unit of space. The plant supplies about 20 percent of the daily water consumption for home use in Israel and approximately 10 percent of the country’s total freshwater consumption.
