Municipal Water Leader May 2020

Volume 7 Issue 5

May 2020

Micky Elisha: Building Jerusalem’s Fifth Pipeline

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Micky Elisha: Building Jerusalem’s Fifth Pipeline

Contents May 2020 Volume 7, Issue 5

5 I mpressive Israel

By Kris Polly 6 Building

Jerusalem’s Fifth Pipeline 10 Israel

Water Education and Trade Tour Preview 14 T he Central Role of the Israel Water Authority 18 H ow TAYA Empowers Small Communities to Recycle Their Wastewater

22 K ando: Improving Wastewater Quality Before It Reaches the Treatment Plant 26 A yala’s Natural Wastewater Treatment Systems 30 M apal’s Floating Fine Bubble Aeration Technology 34 A qwise’s Contributions to MBBR Technology

Do you have a story idea for an upcoming issue? Contact our editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

an American company established in 2009.

STAFF: Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief Joshua Dill, Managing Editor Tyler Young, Writer Stephanie Biddle, Graphic Designer Eliza Moreno, Web Designer Abbey Lloyd, Media Intern Milo Schmitt, Media Intern SUBMISSIONS: Municipal Water Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions. However, the right to edit or deny publishing submissions is reserved. Submissions are returned only upon request. For more information, please contact our office at (202) 698-0690 or municipal.water.leader@waterstrategies.com.

ADVERTISING: Municipal Water Leader accepts one-quarter, half-page, and full-page ads. For more information on rates and placement, please contact Kris Polly at (703) 517-3962 or municipal.water.leader@waterstrategies.com.

CIRCULATION: Municipal Water Leader is distributed to irrigation district managers and boards of directors in the 17 western states, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials, members of Congress and committee staff, and advertising sponsors.

For address corrections or additions, please contact our managing editor, Joshua Dill, at joshua.dill@waterstrategies.com.

Copyright © 2019 Water Strategies LLC. Municipal Water Leader relies on the excellent contributions of a variety of natural resources professionals who provide content for the magazine. However, the views and opinions expressed by these contributors are solely those of the original contributor and do not necessarily represent or reflect the policies or positions of Municipal Water Leader magazine, its editors, or Water Strategies LLC. The acceptance and use of advertisements in Municipal Water Leader do not constitute a representation or warranty by Water Strategies LLC or Municipal Water Leader magazine regarding the products, services, claims, or companies advertised.

MunicipalWaterLeader.com MuniWaterLeader

COVER PHOTO:

Micky Elisha, Project Manager for the fifth pipeline to Jerusalem.

Photo courtesy of Mekorot.

4 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

PHOTO COURTESY OF MEKOROT.

Coming soon in Municipal Water Leader: June: Safety

Municipal Water Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for May/June and November/December by

Impressive Israel

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By Kris Polly

G

ive the plant everything it needs, but not one drop more." This was said to me in a conversation with a representative of an Israeli company that traced its roots to the development of drip irrigation over 50 years ago. That quote has stuck with me because of the practical mindset it represents: Use water, but no more than needed.

Israel is one of the most impressive countries in the world when it comes to water management. A semiarid and arid country with limited freshwater supplies and regions with brackish groundwater, it nevertheless exports water to its neighbors. How is this possible? First, Israel recycles and reuses over 80 percent of its wastewater for irrigation.

Second, it has established five large desalination plants on the Mediterranean coast since 2005 that will soon supply over 80 percent of its domestic and industrial use. Third, the country is traversed by immense and highly efficient water conveyance and delivery systems.

In our cover story, we highlight one of Israel’s most impressive recent water supply projects: the fifth pipeline to Jerusalem. Micky Elisha, who manages the project for Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, tells us about how this 40-mile-long, pressurized, large-diameter pipeline was conceived of and constructed.

We also interview Giora Shaham, the director general of the Israel Water Authority, the interagency body set up in 2007 to coordinate Israel’s water policy, about the most distinctive aspects of Israel’s plans for its future supply.

We also feature a number of impressive and innovative Israeli

water and wastewater companies. Triple-T has created TAYA, a reliable, mechanically simple earth-dug wastewater treatment reactor that is ideal for decentralized treatment in suburban and exurban communities. Kando has created a software platform that can identify and track pollution events within a wastewater collection system before they reach the treatment plant, helping municipalities reduce the strain on their reactors. Ayala has developed the Natural Biological System, an artificial wetland– type installation that can treat wastewater for major urban centers using only gravity and natural elements like aquatic plants. Mapal has built floating fine bubble aerators that can easily be placed into—or removed from—wastewater treatment reactors and lagoons. And finally, Aqwise helps design and construct mobile bed bioreactors using its proprietary carriers.

Israel’s impressive achievements in water technology and management are why we have chosen the country for our next water education and trade tour, scheduled for summer 2021. A special tour preview section in this issue shows what you have to look forward to. I guarantee that by the end of this issue, you will find Israel just as impressive as I do—and will be curious to see the country in person. M Kris Polly is the editor-in-chief of Municipal Water Leader magazine and the president and CEO of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He may be contacted at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

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Building Jerusalem’s Fifth Pipeline

Excavations for the tunneled segment of the fifth pipeline to Jerusalem.

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Micky Elisha: I’m a civil engineer and have worked for Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, since 2000. I was always attracted to huge infrastructure project companies, so Mekorot was a natural choice. Working for Mekorot over the years has been fascinating. Israel has long suffered from a lack of natural water sources and from drought. As Mekorot is the company responsible for water supply throughout the country, our main challenge was to face these problems on a national level, which we have been able to do thanks to our innovative and sophisticated solutions. I started off at Mekorot as a maintenance engineer for pipelines and buildings, later moving on to the project development division. At first, I worked on smaller projects, for example, building small pipes to supply water to small towns for local municipal consumption. I was then lucky enough to be appointed to manage the fifth pipeline project, which began in May 2009. The project is interesting from an engineering and technical perspective—it’s a vast project that involves transporting ground water and desalinated seawater to

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MEKOROT.

ue to population increase, the city of Jerusalem is reaching the limits of its current water supply. To resolve this issue, Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, is building a 25-mile pipeline, between 80 and 102 inches in diameter, to provide the city with water from both underground sources and desalination plants on the Mediterranean coast. As the water mostly comes from sea level and Jerusalem lies half a mile above sea level, the entire pipeline system must be pressurized at 290 to 580 pounds per square inch (psi) to deliver the water. This enormous project was first envisioned in the 1990s and is finally reaching completion, with the first water deliveries expected in 2021.

In this interview, Micky Elisha, the project manager for Mekorot’s pipeline project, tells Municipal Water Leader about the process of planning, designing, and constructing this vital piece of national infrastructure.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

ADVERTISEMENT Jerusalem and the nearby cities. Mekorot has around 25 people working on the project.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about Mekorot.

Micky Elisha: Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, was established in 1937—before the birth of the State of Israel. Today, Mekorot employs 2,200 people in a variety of disciplines. Our revenue is US$1.6 billion per annum, and we invest over US$400 million per year on water infrastructure. The company is responsible for more than 85 percent of the potable water supply in Israel, and around 80 percent of our activities are focused on this.

Throughout the years, Mekorot has built thousands of wells, several desalination plants, numerous pipelines, and many other water sources. We also take care of water security, water quality, water resources management, hydrology, and drillings. The other 20 percent of our activities relate to wastewater treatment and reclamation—we recycle wastewater and provide it to the agricultural sector.

Municipal Water Leader: When did it become clear that Jerusalem needed a new water pipeline?

Micky Elisha: We finished the fourth pipeline to Jerusalem and started operating it around 1984. Subsequently, in the early 1990s, there was a large wave of immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union to Israel, accounting for a population increase of hundreds of thousands. It was obvious to Mekorot that this significant increase in population meant that we needed to start planning a fifth pipeline in order to meet the water demands of Jerusalem's increasing population.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about the planning process for the fifth pipeline?

Micky Elisha: The Israeli government announced the project in 2006 and declared it a National Project—a legal status that helped accelerate the statutory process. We were required to provide a master plan, which was facilitated by the support of the government. The governmental support was essential in light of the complex nature of the project: The fifth pipeline project covers a span of about 40 kilometers (km), or about 25 miles, and crosses various municipalities with different regulations. We began by preparing the master plan, and after its approval, we started

The tunnel boring machine breaks through at the end of the excavation.

MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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The city of Jerusalem.

preparing a detailed design. This process took approximately 2 years, which is considered relatively quick. In many cases, it can take around 10 years for a project of such magnitude to be approved.

Municipal Water Leader: How is the project structured?

Micky Elisha: The project has two main sections: west and east. The western section was executed in the cut-and-cover method and started to operate in 2014. The eastern section, which is now under performance, includes reservoirs, a 13 km (8-mile) tunnel, and pump stations.

As background on the hydraulic system, we have to remember that Jerusalem is about 860 meters (m) (2,821 feet) above sea level. The water that the pipeline will transport includes desalinated seawater, which originates at sea level. To pump the water uphill, there are pump stations in place every 200–250 m (656–820 feet) in elevation. The total quantity of water being pumped at the final stage will be 65,000 cubic meters (17.2 million gallons) per hour. We’ll be pumping for an operational average of 18 hours per day, meaning that the pipeline will be pumping an average of 1.17 million cubic meters (309 million gallons) per day to Jerusalem and nearby towns and cities, including some in the Palestinian Authority.

Municipal Water Leader: How does that amount compare to Jerusalem’s current water supply?

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PHOTO COURTESY OF PIXABAY.

Micky Elisha: The current system in Jerusalem is reaching its full capacity of 420,000 cubic meters (around 111 million gallons) per day. The fifth pipeline is designed to supply water for the next 50 years, so it will not initially be working at full capacity. As things stand, we’ll be starting off at around half capacity.

Every year, we will increase the supply according to consumption and demand.

Municipal Water Leader: What role does desalinated water play in this supply?

Micky Elisha: Close to 80 percent of the drinking water in Israel is desalinated seawater—one of the highest levels of any country in the world. Most of the time, this pipeline will indeed be delivering desalinated water. The remaining water will be sourced from groundwater.

Municipal Water Leader: Is Jerusalem constructing new storage facilities to store this water?

Micky Elisha: Yes, the Jerusalem municipality is preparing for the upcoming increase in water supply and will build a new reservoir at the city’s border to absorb it. In addition, Jerusalem is also building a new pipeline to distribute the water within the city. Finally, as part of this project, Mekorot is building several large reservoirs near the pump stations. These reservoirs will boast a capacity of 30,000– 50,000 cubic meters (24–40.5 acre-feet) of storage. These storage facilities also allow Mekorot to operate the system more efficiently. Operating this pipeline consumes a lot of energy, so doing so more efficiently can save a lot of money.

On the existing pipeline systems, for example, we pay more than 40 million shekels (around US$10 million) a year for electricity costs alone. Saving just 1 percent of the energy used in the operation of the pipeline will therefore lead to significant savings.

Municipal Water Leader: How much energy are you expecting to use on the completed pipeline?

Micky Elisha: Each pump station has 6–8 pump units that consume 7–8 kilowatts (kW) each. We are building huge power substations near each pump station that will supply close to 65 kW each.

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The interior of the pipeline tunnel.

Construction on the tunneled segment of the fifth pipeline to Jerusalem amid existing roads and infrastructure.

Municipal Water Leader: What material is the pressure pipeline made of?

Micky Elisha: The inner liner of the tunnel consists of a 102-inch steel pipe that can withstand 40 bars (580 psi) of pressure. We used steel pipe because of the level of pressure. First, we excavated a tunnel with a diameter of 4 m (157.5 inches). Then we started the installation of a 2.6 m (102-inch) pipe. Following this, we grouted the gap between the steel pipe and the face of the tunnel— approximately 1½ m (59 inches)—with concrete.

Mekorot employees celebrate the breakthrough of the tunnel boring machine.

Municipal Water Leader: When will the tunnel be completed?

Micky Elisha: We have just reached the end of the tunnel, and we recently held our breakthrough ceremony. It’s exciting for me personally because it marks the end of 3 years of challenging and interesting work.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MEKOROT.

Municipal Water Leader: When will the first deliveries of water begin?

Micky Elisha: We expect to begin to operate the system in August 2021. We need to keep to this deadline because Jerusalem is nearing the limits of its current water supply and there is no other backup. M

Micky Elisha is the project manager of the fifth pipeline to Jerusalem. He can be contacted at melisha@mekorot.co.il.

An aerial view of one of the fifth pipeline construction sites.

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Israel Water Education and Please save the date for the following scheduled tour, sponsored in part by Municipal Water Leader magazine and Irrigation Leader magazine.

Projected Itinerary

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1 Arrival at Ben Gurion Airport and dinner in Netanya, Israel.

2 The group will visit the Caesarea National Park and see the Roman aqueduct and water cistern, proceed to Kibbutz Maga and visit the Netafim irrigation factory, and then go to the Megiddo National Park to see the ancient water system there.

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3 The group will drive north to see two of the main sources of the Jordan River, the Dan and Banias Rivers; go to the Golan Heights to see the Syrian border and Mt. Hermon; and proceed to the famous Golan Winery for a tour and wine tasting. The day will end at the Sapir site near the Sea of Galilee, where water is pumped for the National Water Carrier, the water supply system that spans the length and breadth of Israel.

4 The group will depart Tiberias and drive to Mt. Arbel for an amazing panoramic view of the Sea of Galilee, drive to Mt. Gilboa and Kibbutz Maale Gilboa, and then proceed to Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu for an agriculture bio tour.

5 The group will visit the Mount of Olives for a beautiful panoramic view over the Old City of Jerusalem, then visit the City of David, including the Hezekiah Tunnel.

Brave participants can walk through the wet tunnel.

The other option is to walk along the dry tunnel to the Pool of Siloam, then drive to Armon Hanatziv to see the ancient tunnels that convey water from Solomon’s pool to the temple. The group will then enter the Old City to see the Western Wall tunnels, the Pool of Bethesda, and the Roman Cardo with its old wells. There will be an opportunity to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

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Trade Tour Preview, June 28–July 6, 2021 6 The group will depart Jerusalem and drive to the Einot Zukim Nature Reserve, where there are freshwater springs and typical oasis vegetation and animal life. Next, in the desert next to the Dead Sea, which has salty water and no life at all, the group will proceed to the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve, where kibbutz members pump water for their mineral water factory. The group will then visit the world heritage site of Masada, where participants can walk the snake trail by foot or ascend via cable car to see King Herod’s fortress, an ancient synagogue, a Byzantine church, and the water cistern.

8 The group will depart Eilat and drive via the Ramon Crater to the Negev Desert Research and Development Center near Ashalim, which specializes in using salty water for agriculture.

The group will proceed to Kibbutz Hatzerim near Beersheba, the southern branch of the Netafim irrigation factory, and continue to the desalination facility in Ashkelon or Ashdod on the Mediterranean Sea.

7 The group will depart the Dead Sea and drive via the Arava Desert Valley to the Yair Research and Development Agriculture Center and tour the Center for Modern Desert Farming, one of the world’s most advanced. There will be a guided visit to the experimental greenhouses and a presentation of agricultural inventions to deal with the challenges of soil and desert climate. The group will then continue to the ecological Kibbutz Lotan near Eilat and learn how it transformed sandy desert soil into a green and flowering organic garden. Participants will learn basic organic and permaculture tips and practical solutions that the Center for Creative Ecology has developed over the years to treat waste, raise healthy food, save energy, and build naturally. Proceeding to Eilat, the tour will aim to visit a desalination facility the draws from the Red Sea.

Services Included

9 We will hold a farewell dinner in Jaffa and then drive to Ben Gurion Airport for a night flight back home.

• meeting and assistance at Ben Gurion Airport on arrival • licensed English-speaking guide for all transfers and sightseeing days • luxury air-conditioned coach • transfer to/from Ben Gurion airport • entrance fees for all visits and tours • eight nights of hotel accommodation • breakfasts and dinners at hotels and farewell dinner at local restaurant

Information on pricing will be presented in updated advertisements and posted to our websites, www.irrigationleadermagazine.com and www.municipalwaterleader.com, in the near future.

To receive more information about the tour and to tentatively reserve a participation slot, please email Tom Wacker at tom.wacker@waterstrategies.com.

MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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The Central Role of the Israel Water Authority water from the northern streams and sources of the Jordan River, preventing pollution from reaching the Sea of Galilee.

About 15 years ago, I was a consultant for what was then the Water Commission, today the Israel Water Authority. I dealt with the country’s major water systems and was one of the active members of the committee that formulated the reform of the current authority’s structure in the water sector.

In addition to my work in Israel, I worked as a consultant performing system analysis in China, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Serbia.

In June 2017, I was nominated by the government to serve as director general of the Water Authority. It is a 5-year term position.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the Israel Water Authority, its history, and its current responsibilities.

National Water Carrier infrastructure near Kibbutz Hukok in northern Israel.

I

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

14 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

Giora Shaham: I’m a water engineer.

I studied water engineering in the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology. My second degree was in water resources analysis, studying multiobjective problems concerning water issues and environmental issues.

In my professional life, I started as a water engineer with the Lake Kinneret Authority and then became a private consultant specializing in water resources analysis, focusing on systemic problems rather than on detailed design.

I prepared a sustainability study for, and then managed the construction of, a big project in northern Israel to resolve environmental problems caused by the drying of the swampy Hula Valley, which had occurred at the beginning of the 1950s. At the beginning of the 1990s, about 40 years after the valley was dried, we planned and constructed a wetland to filter the

PHOTO COURTESY OF ARIEL PALMON.

srael is an arid nation whose population has quintupled over the last 60 years.

This has necessitated bold and creative water resources policies, including the aggressive use of water recycling and desalination. Because water policy touches all aspects of Israeli national life, the Israeli Parliament in 2007 established an independent governmental body, the Israel Water Authority, that is designed to give a seat at the decisionmaking table to representatives from all relevant ministries.

In this interview, the Israel Water Authority’s director general and chairman of the council, Giora Shaham, tells Municipal Water Authority about the distinctive features of Israel’s water policy and the role the Water Authority plays in setting it.

Giora Shaham: Until 2007, the Water Commission in Israel was under one ministry. It used to be under the Ministry of Agriculture, then it was transferred to the Ministry of National Infrastructures (today called the Ministry of Energy). But there were a lot of ministries in the Israeli administration responsible for some fragment of the water sector.

For example, water pollution was the responsibility of the Ministry of Environment, water supply to the municipalities in the urban sector was the responsibility of the Ministry of Interior, all the investments needed to improve the water system were under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance, and water supply for agriculture fell to the Ministry of Agriculture. In 2006, a major legislative reform established the Water Authority, which is a single professional organ that sets policy and bylaws, governed by a council that includes highranking representatives from all

ADVERTISEMENT relevant ministries (Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Finance, and Interior) together with two public representatives. I am the director general of the Water Authority as well as the chairman of the council. It is a one-table, professional, independent decisionmaking body.

The Israeli water sector is essentially a closed market, which means that its water rates need to cover all the investment, maintenance costs, and energy costs that are needed to supply potable water, whether for domestic, industrial, or agricultural use. There is one rate for domestic use, one for industrial use, and one for agricultural use, but added up, those rates need to cover the full cost of providing potable water. The situation is different for recycled water, because we need to clear the market and support farmers in taking the effluent from the sewage treatment plants to use it to irrigate. That means we support the infrastructure through governmental budget subsidies and loans.

The principle of covering all the costs of infrastructure, real estate, and water supply encourages water conservation.

We manage the water under the principle of firmness and uniformity of service. As a rule, all water users in a given sector pay the same price regardless of location. However, in order to support the basic needs of the domestic sector, we actually have a two-block tariff system.

The rate for water up to 3.5 cubic meters (924 gallons) per person per month—which is the normal amount for domestic use—is about US$2.10 per cubic meter. Past 3.5 cubic meters per person per month, the rates rise to about US$3.50 per cubic meter. Those two rates cover all the costs for development, maintenance, energy, etc.

PHOTO COURTESY OF NIELSF.

Municipal Water Leader: Is the Water Authority in charge of coming up with a national water policy?

Giora Shaham: Yes. Water law in Israel is quite distinctive. The first sentence of Israel’s water law says, “The country’s water resources are public

property controlled by the state and are designated for the needs of the residents and development of the country.” Water resources, for the purpose of this law, include springs, streams, rivers, lakes, reservoirs, either surface or groundwater, natural or artificial. All the water belongs to the state, and the state is the regulator. Water that is pumped from the sea also belongs to the state.

Municipal Water Leader: In addition to developing policy, does the water authority operate infrastructure?

Giora Shaham: The Water Authority is a regulator. Operations are done

by Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, which is responsible for about 70 percent of domestic water supply. It supplies water to municipalities. Inside the municipalities, the responsibility for water distribution, storage, and sewage collection and treatment falls to public water companies. Mekorot is also responsible for about 50 percent of water supply for agricultural use; the rest falls to local water associations and water suppliers, which usually belong to the farmers. In northern Israel, there is no effluent to supply to agriculture, but in central Israel and the south, farmers use the effluent from sewage treatment plants to irrigate. About 85–86 percent of treated wastewater is used for agriculture.

Municipal Water Leader: What are some of the main elements of the water policy that the Water Authority has developed?

Giora Shaham: We have two major responsibilities: First, we work to supply the long-term needs of all the regions of Israel by planning and developing programs. There are a few regions that are not connected to the national system—the valley upstream of the Sea of Galilee and some small areas of eastern Israel—but about 80 percent of the country is connected to the National Water Carrier, a pipe that takes water from the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel to Beersheba in the south. We

A map of the National Water Carrier, Israel’s largest water project.

are now connecting our desalination facilities to this big pipe. We now have five major desalination plants along the shores of the Mediterranean in northwestern Israel, producing about 600 million cubic meters (486,428 acrefeet) of water a year. They are connected to the National Carrier, which conveys the water to the rest of Israel. Two other plants are in the tendering process.

Our other major responsibility is the regulation of the water sector, including economic regulation, standards of service, licensing, and water allocation.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the development of water recycling in Israel.

Giora Shaham: About 60 years ago, nobody paid attention to sewage and simply let it flow into the streams, the lakes, and the sea. Then, as the dimensions of the health and environmental problems this caused MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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became clear, the construction of sewage treatment plants was quickly initiated to protect the streams and aquifers. As the population and its water needs grew, however, we realized that if it were treated well, this water could be used for agricultural purposes. We started to construct a local reuse system and to store the purified water in our reservoirs so that it could be used during the summer to irrigate olives, avocados, mangos, dates, and other trees. Nowadays, the Ministry of Health is involved in regulating and permitting and sets standards for using recycled effluent for irrigation. It is widely used to irrigate vegetables. As I mentioned, we reuse 86 percent of wastewater for irrigation, and we aim to reuse 100 percent.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you also tell us about the development of desalination and how government policy supported it?

Municipal Water Leader: What water conservation measures have you promoted or required in Israel?

Giora Shaham: Water conservation is a big issue here. About 60 years ago, Israel had a population of about 2 million.

16 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

Municipal Water Leader: How have changes in the climate affected Israel’s water resources, and what has the policy response to those changes been?

Giora Shaham: We are seeing changes in the climate. Within about 30 years, our average precipitation is expected to decline by about 20 percent. That projection is taken into consideration in our calculations of our water balance. Our desalination development is based on the assumption that droughts will be more severe and more frequent. Just 2 years ago, we suffered from 5 continuous years of drought that almost emptied all our natural reserves. That was the reason that we immediately started to construct another desalination plant. We are defending ourselves against climate change, taking all measures needed. We are quite worried about what will happen with our neighbors, including Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.

Municipal Water Leader: What can Israel teach the world about water policy?

Giora Shaham: It is more that we can share our experience than that we can teach. I think the fact that the water sector in Israel is managed as a closed market is the key to our ability to manage it in a sustainable way. This is not the case in many places around the world. Especially in less-developed economies, where water is precious, politicians are afraid to touch water costs. That reflects the severe problems caused by water shortage and globally changing climates, which decrease the amount of water available for great parts of the human population. However, it is also a challenge in the most advanced countries, and we have learned that the key to tackling natural water shortages is effective water management. M Giora Shaham is the director general of the Israel Water Authority. For more information about the Water Authority, visit www.water.gov.il.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ISRAEL WATER AUTHORITY..

Giora Shaham: Around the beginning of the new millennium, we realized that our natural water resources were not sufficient to meet the water needs of our growing population.

Natural water levels were declining, and the overdrafting of our aquifers threatened to destroy them. There was no alternative but large-scale seawater desalination.

We started on our first desalination plant in 2005, and now, as I mentioned, produce around 600 million cubic meters (486,428 acre-feet) of desalinated water. All the plants are connected to the national water system and supply water mainly to the domestic sector. Now we are planning to construct two more large desalination plants. In 3–4 years, we should be producing 900 million cubic meters (729,643 acrefeet) of desalinated water per year, which should cover 80–90 percent of Israel’s total domestic and industrial use.

I should mention that we are also responsible for supplying water to the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. We supply the West Bank with about 150 million cubic meters (121,607 acre-feet) per year and Gaza with about 20 million cubic meters (16,214 acre-feet) a year. Another consumer is the Kingdom of Jordan. As agreed in the peace treaty signed by the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the late King Hussein of Jordan in 1994, we supply Jordan with about 55 million cubic meters (44,589 acre-feet) a year.

Jordan is suffering from a scarcity of water. Its water is not balanced, and it has a deficit of about a billion cubic meters (810,714 acre-feet) a year. Because of the civil war in Syria and the war in Iraq, there are about 2 million refugees living in Jordan. We are making many efforts to support Jordan’s water supply, and we should be able to increase it next year. Jordan has no direct connection to the sea and cannot desalinate water, so we have to support it.

Now it is almost 10 million. In the West Bank, there were no more than 300,000–400,000 people; now there are about 3.5 million. The country is densely populated, and all the natural water bodies—including the coastal and mountain aquifers—are affected by pollution from industry, sewage, and so on. We’re making efforts to conserve the water in the Sea of Galilee and in the aquifers. We strictly regulate the quality of treated wastewater and require it to be nearly on the level of drinking water. We are trying to preserve areas that are sensitive to pollution, not allowing buildings and industrial facilities in those places. We are trying to restore water flowing in small streams. We also invest a lot of money in education on water conservation and sustainability. Finally, we are trying to capture the rainwater that falls on buildings along the coastline and redirect it to restore the aquifers.

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How TAYA Empowers Small Communities to Recycle Their Wastewater

The TAYA pilot installation in Bennett, Colorado.

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astewater reuse is an increasingly popular source of water for agricultural and domestic use throughout larger municipalities. Yet few small communities can afford to implement and operate the complex treatment technology required for reuse.

An Israeli company, Triple-T, is seeking to change this paradigm with its TAYA technology, a simple, sustainable, and affordable alternative to conventional wastewater reuse that is nearing regulatory approval in Colorado. Smart technologies like TAYA are an integral part of resiliency planning in small communities, reducing dependency on centralized utilities and promoting sustainable growth.

In this interview, Smart Water Group President Ben Perlman tells Municipal Water Leader about how TAYA works and the advantages it holds for developers and small municipalities.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about Triple-T.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Ben Perlman: We’ve been active in Israel for over a decade, supplying municipal, industrial, and agricultural customers with sustainable wastewater solutions. We’ve engaged in a number of smaller projects abroad, including in Chile, Italy, South Africa, and the United States. We’re also seeing an increased demand for our technology in China.

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Municipal Water Leader: Where around the world is Triple-T active?

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your TAYA technology.

Ben Perlman: TAYA is a hybrid biological wastewater treatment technology that combines the intensive treatment capabilities

PHOTO COURTESY OF TRIPLE-T.

Ben Perlman: My journey into the water business began in 2010, when I relocated from Boston to Tel Aviv to support our family office investment in the Israeli water space.

Over the next 3½ years, I worked hand-in-hand with the chief executive officer, building our business, Water From Innovation, also known as WFI Group. In 2014, I returned to the United States and started Smart Water Group, an affiliated entity that helps our group in Israel commercialize its water technologies in the United States.

Ben Perlman: Triple-T, one of the four business units that make up WFI Group, specializes in sustainable wastewater reuse. The company was founded in 2007 with the mission of bringing affordable wastewater treatment to small communities and businesses with limited resources. We empower municipalities, decentralized communities, and agricultural customers to transform water treatment from a burden into an asset by minimizing operational expenses; maximizing tangible resources; reducing their ecofootprints; and providing affordable clean water autonomy and, ultimately, peace of mind.

ADVERTISEMENT of the leading technologies on the market (activated sludge, moving bed reactor, etc.) with the operational simplicity of more extensive approaches like constructed wetlands. The result is a state-of-the-art treatment plant that requires a fraction of the labor, maintenance, and electricity of conventional wastewater treatment and empowers small communities to take ownership of their water resources. TAYA systems are noiseless, odorless, and sustainably powered by solar power, making them an ideal fit for any green community. We are now showcasing this technology for the first time in Colorado.

Municipal Water Leader: How does TAYA technology work and what would a TAYA installation look like?

Ben Perlman: A TAYA system is an earth-dug, fixed-film aerobic anoxic reactor, comprising two basins filled with a crushed-gravel aggregate that is seeded with biofilm. A specialized pumping arrangement moves water from one basin to the other in a fill-and-drain motion, supplying food to the bacteria living on the aggregate. During each drain cycle, atmospheric oxygen is pulled deep into the media, supplying the bacteria with an unlimited supply of the oxygen needed to break down organic matter in the wastewater. This fill-and-drain motion is continuous, supplying both food and oxygen to the bacteria with every reciprocating cycle.

Every TAYA has three treatment zones: an aerobic environment, an anoxic environment, and an anaerobic environment. This enables full nitrification and denitrification in the same basin, in additional to 99 percent complete removal of biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and total suspended solids (TSS). TAYA is a full secondary treatment system that replaces both aerobic treatment and secondary clarification, greatly simplifying the process. A typical TAYA plant would consist of basic headworks for solids and grit removal, anaerobic settling, and the TAYA system itself. This simplification of the process delivers 80 percent savings in energy and 60 percent in labor in maintenance—huge numbers for small communities with limited resources.

Municipal Water Leader: What is the treatment capacity of the system?

Ben Perlman: We’ve installed TAYA systems on applications ranging from 50,000 gallons a day to 1.5 million gallons a day. While this system scales like any other treatment technology, the land requirements of the system make it most suitable for rural communities. A TAYA capable of treating 300,000 gallons a day would require 1 acre of land—perhaps 2–3 times the land required by conventional treatment, but 10 times less than that required by a constructed wetland.

TAYA is ideal for small towns on the periphery of larger metro areas, where land is cheaper and more available but experienced labor is in limited supply. This is the ideal

application for our technology and the primary focus of our marketing efforts.

Municipal Water Leader: After the treatment process is over, are there biosolids or waste products that need to be disposed of?

Ben Perlman: Amazingly, no. We have a primary anaerobic treatment before the TAYA system, which is typical of almost all treatment plans. However, the TAYA itself is operated in starvation mode, meaning we feed the bacteria just enough for them to survive but not enough to produce any secondary sludge. We have systems that have operated for over a decade without producing any secondary sludge, a huge advantage over all other treatment technologies.

Municipal Water Leader: How does TAYA save money?

Ben Perlman: The major cost drivers of most wastewater treatment plants are electricity, replacement parts, and labor, all of which are a function of electromechanical complexity. TAYA is designed based on the principles of electromechanical simplicity and process redundancy, making it one of the simplest system in the world to operate.

TAYA has two pumps and one control system. The pumps are high-efficiency turbines with a lifespan of more than 10 years, consuming 80 percent less energy than conventional wastewater treatment—about 0.4 kilowatts per thousand gallons treated. The rest of the infrastructure is made up of earthworks, piping, gravel, and a bit of concrete—all of which have no moving parts and a lifespan of more than 30 years.

TAYA is engineered with every robust process tolerance you could imagine. It utilizes a complete mix feed system and operates with longer retention than most systems—typically 2–3 days for municipal wastewater—enabling the system to handle variable influent conditions with ease. TAYA works with hardy bacteria capable of withstanding large temperature swings and intermittent interruptions in food or oxygen.

We also save labor. None of our systems in Israel require a full-time laborer because they don’t require daily maintenance or operational oversight. Our part-time operators show up to take a sample in accordance with the requirements of the Israeli Ministry of Health and Environment, and that’s it. The system is designed to run itself, and nothing breaks.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your installation in Bennett, Colorado.

Ben Perlman: We’ve partnered with the Town of Bennett and a local developer to showcase TAYA to the Colorado market and receive regulatory approval. Bennett lies on a high desert plain, 30 miles east of Denver, where the demand for housing is high but water is scarce. The town’s leadership is intelligent and proactive. They have recently upgraded their central MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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ADVERTISEMENT wastewater treatment plant, but they also recognize the benefits of a more flexible, resilient, and distributed approach.

With a recent surge in developer demand, the town’s new wastewater plant will need to be expanded in short order and modified to handle flows from miles away. In response, the town is thinking outside the box and looking at a distributed system. That means building treatment capacity on site, 2–3 miles away from core infrastructure, and reusing the water locally. There is no reason to build a long pipeline and a lift station to move water to a centralized facility.

Bennett is on Colorado’s Front Range, where water rights are the most expensive in the country, between $30,000 and $45,000 an acre-foot. Due to severe water shortages, developers need to prove that they have a 100year renewable water source. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) has been proactive in advancing regulation and cutting red tape to allow communities to recycle water more. It has recently expanded what it calls Regulation 84 Category 3, which is its standard for the highest quality of reuse water.

Municipal Water Leader: Was it difficult to get permits for the Bennett installation?

Ben Perlman: No, it wasn’t. We had been working closely with CDPHE before we engaged Bennett to make sure we were operating within the state’s regulatory framework.

CDPHE concluded early on that TAYA required alternative testing and acceptance, meaning that we needed to invest in a local pilot and collect a year’s worth of data to prove the system’s efficacy. That’s the path we’ve been on since August 2019, when we commissioned the system.

Municipal Water Leader: What results have you seen?

Ben Perlman: Since the beginning of the pilot, the TAYA has delivered exceptional results. Treating the same wastewater as Bennett’s primary wastewater treatment plant, our system has achieved an average removal rate of 97 percent BOD, 96 percent TSS, and 98 percent ammonium, far exceeding CDPHE’s secondary treatment requirements. Some technologies struggle in cold weather, but earth-dug systems like TAYA maintain their temperature much better than above-ground systems, providing ideal conditions for bacteria to flourish in. We’ll continue operating the pilot into the spring to make sure the technology performs well during spring snow melt, but we expect approval in the next few months.

Ben Perlman: Israel has a history of water reuse and conservation that predates the founding of the State of Israel. Israelis have grown up in a society where water is a

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Municipal Water Leader: Do you have other U.S. clients who are interested in implementing the technology?

Ben Perlman: We’re engaging a number of residential developers and small communities that are looking for smart reuse solutions, and the interest is growing. While there are many reuse technologies out there, TAYA is uniquely positioned to empower developers and small communities, not only because the system saves money but because it enhances the overall appeal of the community.

Traditionally, wastewater treatment plants are located on the periphery of a community—you don’t want to see or smell them. TAYA is the opposite. The system produces no noise or odor and is built entirely underground, enabling the development of the land above. You can build a soccer field on top of it, integrate it into a public park, or construct a solar array in the middle of the system. Imagine a wastewater treatment plant that is actually a net producer of energy—this is 100 percent achievable with TAYA. We’re weeks away from regulatory approval, and we’re optimistic that developers and small communities will continue to embrace this solution. The merits of this technology are evident for anyone brave enough to explore a new approach to an age-old problem, so we’re confident that TAYA will find its niche in the United States. TAYA is part of a larger paradigm shift toward sustainable reuse, and we’re excited to offer a solution to the communities that need it the most. M Ben Perlman is the president of Smart Water Group. He can be contacted at ben@wfi-group.net.

PHOTO COURTESY OF TRIPLE-T.

Municipal Water Leader: How does TAYA fit into the broader landscape of water policy in Israel?

tremendously valuable and constrained resource. They would never consider discharging treated wastewater, as is commonly done in the United States. That’s the philosophy our company was built with—given the opportunity to treat or to reuse, we always choose to reuse. It may come as no surprise that today, Israel leads the world in water reuse, recycling almost 90 percent of its wastewater for agricultural purposes.

Any treatment technology developed in the Israeli water ecosystem must be capable of achieving consistent, ultrahigh-quality water for reuse. That’s the standard we applied to TAYA, and we’re seeing the results in Bennett. For this reason, it’s easy to integrate TAYA into a tertiary treatment system, because by the time the water leaves the TAYA, it’s almost standard-filter quality, which is an integral component of a tertiary filtration process. With a simple sand filter and some ultraviolet disinfection, you have perfect-quality wastewater that will hit any turbidity target imposed by a regulator in the United States. That’s the type of water you need for toilet flushing, public irrigation, public gardening, etc.

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Geneva is now part of the Company.

Geneva Pipe and Precast is now part of Northwest Pipe Company. Expanding our core business of water transmission, this acquisition deepens our water infrastructure product capabilities by adding additional reinforced concrete pipe capacity and a full line of precast concrete products including storm drains and manholes, catch basins, vaults, and curb inlets as well as innovative products that extend the life of concrete pipe and manholes for sewer applications.

We welcome Geneva Pipe and Precast to the Company. Following our firm-wide values of accountability, commitment, teamwork, and safety, we commit to providing the highest quality pipe—and precast—in North America.

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Kando: Improving Wastewater Quality Before It Reaches the Treatment Plant

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astewater is not just waste—it is a product that will show up downstream, whether it is recycled and immediately reused for irrigation or consumption or it is discharged into a river or ocean, eventually ending up in our taps again. Treating wastewater and discharging it as high-quality, nonpolluted water is important, but it is also difficult. Kando is an Israeli company with an innovative approach to improving wastewater quality. Its software creates a real-time model of the quality of wastewater within a utility’s collection system and can identify and trace pollution events back to their sources. By working to improve the quality of the wastewater they collect, utilities can ease the burden on their wastewater treatment plants and produce higher-quality purified wastewater.

In this interview, Gili Elkin, Kando’s chief growth officer, and Ari Goldfarb, its chief executive officer (CEO), tell Municipal Water Leader about how Kando’s product works and how it is helping cities around the world improve the quality of their treatment processes.

The user interface of Kando’s solution.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions.

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Ari Goldfarb: My background is environmental engineering, and I focus on technology and water. I’ve worked as a process engineer in a treatment plant and as a consultant and working engineer for almost 10 years. In 2012, I and one other partner founded Kando. Today, I am its CEO. Our vision is to create a better and healthier environment.

It is a huge vision that one company cannot achieve alone.

Our partnership with ICI Fund has become a model that has been integrated into all aspects of our business: We create partnerships with clients and other stakeholders in order to reach our goals.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about Kando as a company.

Ari Goldfarb: The company was founded in 2012 to meet a gap in the market. There are a lot of technologies and solutions in the wastewater sector that focus on downstream water treatment plants—how to create better treatment methods, how to optimize the treatment, and how to improve the effluent. However, it was clear to me from my time in the wastewater sector, working with both industries and municipalities, that reducing a problem at its source is actually the best solution. It is natural for an urban utility to focus on improving how its wastewater treatment facility treats pollution, but if a utility can understand its wastewater collection system and control the upstream sources of pollution in real time, it can treat its wastewater even more successfully. Our idea was to create a technology that would allow users to see the quality of the wastewater in their collection systems in real time and control the sources of that wastewater.

In Israel, utilities are particularly open to new ideas, so we brought this idea to them and explained that we could collect data from their collection systems and, for the first time, make those systems transparent to them.

We approached utilities while our idea was still rather immature, and because they immediately saw the value of our vision, they didn’t look at us solely as vendors, but as partners, and actually helped us build our solution. Once we had built it, we found that there was a huge need for it, and after 3–4 years, we were working with many of the cities in Israel. We then moved into the Australian, European, and U.S. markets. In Europe, we work in cities like Athens; Berlin; Paris; and a number of cities in northern Italy, including Bologna and Milan. We now have

PHOTOS COURTESY OF KANDO.

Gili Elkin: I’m the founder and general partner of the Israel-Colorado Innovation (ICI) Fund. ICI Fund invests in promising Israeli companies in the water, wastewater, and agriculture industries, among others, and supports their scale-up in the United States through one of its partners, Innosphere Ventures. ICI Fund invested in Kando, and once it invests in a company it becomes a partner of that company. As such, I act as a member of Kando’s board of directors as well as Kando’s chief growth officer. I believe

that great goals can only be reached through strong partnerships, and we have built a strong partnership with Kando. We have a common goal that is greater than all of us, and we will do whatever it takes, together, to reach it.

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Kando identifies a pollution event.

more than 40 employees around the world, including at an office in the United States.

Gili Elkin: Israeli innovation is particularly strong in the water and wastewater sectors. Sixty percent of Israel is desert and the rest is semiarid, but we actually export water to our neighbors because of our innovation and technology.

People often say things like “There’s no time,” but I say that there are 24 hours in a day and it’s all a question of how we manage that time. The same goes for water. We have a certain amount of water; the question is how to manage it.

Israel’s strength lies in how it manages its water and wastewater. We value our wastewater, treat 95 percent of it, and reuse around 85 percent of the treated wastewater. We treat the wastewater in the Shafdan, a wastewater treatment plant located in central Israel, and use distribution pipelines to take it to the Negev Desert in the south. The cities reuse wastewater to irrigate parks. They value wastewater and are constantly looking for technologies to improve its quality and to expand opportunities for reuse.

Cities would also do anything to prevent pollution in wastewater, since sewage does occasionally overflow into streets and polluted wastewater contains viruses and poses a risk to public health. Kando’s system has the potential to help cities control the quality of their wastewater, and now more than ever, it is essential to protect public health. This is demonstrated by the increase in requests we are seeing from current and new clients.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your activities in the U.S. market.

Gili Elkin: As already mentioned, ICI Fund and Kando have a strong partnership, and through the Israeli-U.S. Water Initiative, which is a platform that connects U.S. water leaders with the Israeli ecosystem, we are introducing Israeli solutions to the greatest water challenges in the United States.

This initiative is supported by former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, who are interested in bringing more Israeli water technologies into their respective states. We are also meeting with other state leaders. In January 2020, Ari and I met the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, and in November 2019 we met the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer. We are also meeting with mayors and heads of utilities to learn about their challenges and to tell them more about the strengths of Israeli water technologies. This is how we have been expanding Kando in the United States, and we’ve been growing quickly. We started in California and work in several major cities there; we also work in Arizona, Oregon, and Texas. Now we are expanding into Maryland and Michigan. We only started our expansion into the United States 1 year ago. We are taking advantage of our invitations to speak at major water and wastewater conferences in the United States to increase awareness of Kando’s mission of improving wastewater quality, increasing the reuse of nonpolluted wastewater, and protecting public health around the world.

Municipal Water Leader: How does Kando’s product work?

Ari Goldfarb: We look at wastewater not as waste, but as a product that someone else will use downstream. The quality of that end product is extremely important. Even in places MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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biological treatment. Some cities have more industrial pollution sources; some have more natural sources of pollution, like seawater penetration. Each source of wastewater, down to hotel kitchens and commercial kitchens, influences wastewater quality, which in turn affects the treatment plant and the collection system. Over the 9 years that we’ve been active, we have learned how to record changes in wastewater quality and have built software that can trace those events, tell us where they are happening, what their sources are, and what effects they will have on the treatment plant.

Municipal Water Leader: What results are clients seeing in their operations and their expenses?

A Kando datalogger collects data from a wastewater collection system.

where that wastewater is not being reused for irrigation, it will end up somewhere and people will encounter it again, whether in the ocean, at the beach, in rivers, or in the aquifer. The best way to improve the quality of that wastewater is to control its sources and make sure that what comes to the treatment plant is of a better quality. The way we do that is by enabling utilities to understand their cities’ complex collection networks and to see what is occurring within them. If there is a change in the wastewater quality anywhere in the city, our technology allows them to see it.

Our product is based on data analytics. We collect the basic data that utilities have about their collection system. We also install sensor units in the collection system. We bring all this data together, and based on the company’s experience and the client’s understanding of what happens in their wastewater collection systems as well as data that we have been collecting from all over the world for a decade now, we create a model of what happens in the collection system.

Based on that, we translate the data into simple action items for the operator. That way, the operator doesn’t have to look into raw data to see if there was a change somewhere in the city and figure out how to react to it by themselves. That is how we notify the operator about pollution events and trace their sources within the collection system.

Ari Goldfarb: We have witnessed that wastewater utilities all over the world face similar challenges. Wastewater is collected from sources like food and chemical industries and undergoes

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Gili Elkin: We will always have wastewater, and we need to continue to operate treatment systems to protect public health, especially during these days when normal operations have been interrupted. We enable cities to control their systems remotely so that they can continuously ensure that the quality of their wastewater is high and that they’re not discharging polluted wastewater into the oceans and rivers.

We will do everything we can to improve public health and to help cities and governments deal with the current crisis using our technology. M

Gili Elkin is Kando’s chief growth officer and a member of its board. She can be contacted at gili@kando.eco.

Ari Goldfarb is the chief executive officer of Kando. He can be contacted at ari@kando.eco.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF KANDO.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you describe a pollution event that the Kando system would be able to identify, and how it would alert a wastewater provider?

Ari Goldfarb: I’ll give you an example related to current events.

During the coronavirus outbreak, utilities are concerned with operating their systems while much of the workforce is at home. That makes it even more important to get information about what is happening in your collection systems remotely.

More generally, if you can control what happens upstream and you can see where pollution is coming from in real time, you can communicate with those sources and work with them to reduce the polluted load coming into the treatment plant. That helps reduce costs, operations and maintenance needs, and construction costs. If treatment plants can reduce their incoming loads by controlling their sources, they may not have to upgrade or expand. We replace a concrete solution with a digital solution.

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Ayala’s Natural Wastewater Treatment Systems

An NBS system in a town near Tel Aviv, Israel, provides onsite sewage treatment and water recycling while doubling as an ornamental pond.

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yala is an Israeli company that builds specialized installations similar to artificial wetlands that can treat wastewater to high standards of purity using nothing more than gravity and natural processes. Using a carefully selected combination of natural elements like aquatic plants, gravel, microorganisms, and special natural additives, these Natural Biological Systems (NBS) can be customized to remove different contaminants from water and to purify it to any standard desired. NBS installations can be integrated into urban park spaces, making them suitable for densely populated areas as well as industrial and agricultural zones.

In this interview, Ayala’s chief executive officer (CEO), Eli Cohen, tells Municipal Water Leader about how the NBS works and how it saves money and energy.

Eli Cohen: I was born and raised in Israel and studied physics, thermodynamics, and materials science engineering. About 35 years ago, I was working for a high-tech company as its

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF AYALA.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

research and development leader. At that time, I bought a farm in the Galilee region as a place to live, but when I got to the land, I realized, “This is my destiny—I want to be a farmer.” I decided that I would slowly move into agriculture, but it happened faster than I expected, and I quickly got into growing aquatic plants to sell to Japan and Europe.

Dealing with aquatic plants and water, I started facing a lot of issues. To grow these plants, you need water that meets specific quality standards, because they normally grow in clean streams in the Amazon, Southeast Asia, or Africa. Moreover, I wanted to do it in the semiarid climate of Israel. I ended up learning all about water and how to keep the environment adaptive. My education, together with intuitional learning and long field experience, helped me with the tasks of treating water, managing the environment, and farming.

Today, what’s written on my business card is Sustainability Expert. A sustainable ecosystem is one that can live by itself like any living creature. The aim of our company is to create sustainable systems that can run by themselves, and the only way to do that is to rely on nature. We’re working with nature to help nature—and to help ourselves. This isn’t about hugging

ADVERTISEMENT trees, it’s about living our lives and doing our work, but with less energy, less chemicals, and less human dependence.

The world today is facing two main development issues.

One is the lack of fresh water. There is a huge need in many parts of the world for good, fresh water; meanwhile, only 1–2 percent of sewage water is being recycled. At the same time, we need to reduce our carbon footprint, which results primarily from burning fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels is only 15–30 percent efficient; the remaining heat and gases contribute to air pollution and the greenhouse effect. It’s obvious that we need to use less energy. In fact, a big chunk of our energy usage goes to water treatment and transport.

If we can treat and recycle more water in a natural way that does not require much energy, then we can change the entire game without changing our way of life.

kind of contaminant a client wants to treat. Some create more aerobic conditions; others more anaerobic conditions.

Different types of gravel can also help treat different types of contaminants. Limestone, for example, is good at absorbing phosphate from the water. We make the water flow through gravel filters, creating a kind of natural chemical filtration.

Most importantly, the plants you plant in the gravel perform a powerful biological filtration function. Their root zones support huge communities of microorganisms, like fungus and microbes, which use the contaminants as a source of food and energy. All the contaminants break down to the mineral level and accumulate in the gravel or in the plants themselves.

What results is clean drinking water of high quality in all parameters, not only organics and solids, but also heavy metals, hormones, pathogenic elements, and biota.

Municipal Water Leader: When did you found Ayala?

Eli Cohen: Ayala as a company was established in 2002, but I’ve been working on the same things independently since 1989.

Municipal Water Leader: How many employees do you have today?

Eli Cohen: Today we have 12 employees, but I also work with freelancers and contractors, including architects and engineers.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about the NBS technology?

Eli Cohen: It is designed to mimic nature and uses natural elements, both biotic and abiotic. It behaves like a wetland.

Wetland plants, like all plants, develop a root zone, a highly efficient net of roots that supports huge communities of microorganisms that live in perfect harmony and full symbiosis. The importance of aquatic plants lies in their ability to transfer oxygen, which is absent in water, to the root zone and to release gases through the stem. The plants’ roots and the microorganisms come into contact with the contaminants in the water and break them down and remove them. However, natural wetlands cannot cope with the amount of contaminants that humans are discharging into the environment, and that is why they’re collapsing.

The NBS is an artificial wetland designed to treat specific contaminants and a specific organic load. It is made far more effective than a natural wetland by adjusting the hydrology, the carrying substrate, and the types of plants. We have also developed different kinds of natural additives that stimulate the work of the biological system.

Physically, the NBS is a pond about 1 meter in depth that has a special substrate and is planted with different aquatic plants. Water flows through it in any of a number of water regimes—upstream, downstream, horizontal, free flow, etc. These parameters are chosen depending on the

This NBS installation at a golf course in Hyderabad, India, provides onsite treatment of water from a running sewage canal for irrigation use.

The NBS requires zero energy: It all works by gravity. In fact, with the plants, you’re actually sucking carbon from the atmosphere. We don’t use flocculants, so there is no sludge.

Big and heavy solids are separated by gravity, given adequate retention time. Moreover, the systems are part of your landscape. Imagine that the park near your house cleans the sewage that comes from your home. You can jog or play with your children there and never know that sewage is being treated under your feet. We call it an active landscape. We convert city parks into active parks. That eliminates the need to build a long pipe or pumping station to send the sewage far away to a treatment center.

The NBS does much more than just treat sewage.

Because it’s part of your landscape and watershed, it can collect storm water and treat it as well. Rainwater, unfortunately, is often not especially pure, so you can treat MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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ADVERTISEMENT it and then use it to recharge the aquifer or discharge it into a river. Holding and catching rainwater upstream can also help prevent floods downstream. Today, we see more and more floods in cities around the world because of urbanization. The land is all covered with asphalt and cement, so water flows down the road and into drains and ends up causing floods. Our system holds, treats, and releases rainwater at a more moderate rate.

Municipal Water Leader: How long does it take the water to go through the system?

Eli Cohen: We call that retention time, and it can range from half a day to 3 full days, depending on the quality of the inlet and the quality you want in the outlet.

Municipal Water Leader: When you build an NBS installation, how long does it take for the plants to grow and mature before they are ready to treat water?

Eli Cohen: The system starts working from day 1, but the plants need some time to develop their root zones. After 1 year, the system is mature; after 2 years, it’s even better. At 1 or 2 years, it produces water of a higher quality. We design NBS installations to treat the target amount of water almost from day 1, so after 1–2 years it can actually treat more water than it was designed for.

Municipal Water Leader: Does the NBS need any sort of maintenance once it’s been built?

Eli Cohen: Because it doesn’t have any moving parts and doesn’t use any chemicals, the maintenance is mostly gardening.

Municipal Water Leader: Does the water that your system produces meet government-set water quality standards?

Eli Cohen: We can meet any standard. If you want to meet high standards, you might need to increase your retention time. We can also play with the hydrology of the system and use our special natural additives to make it more efficient.

Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about some of your applications and clients?

28 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

Municipal Water Leader: Who are your other clients?

Eli Cohen: We do a lot of work with industrial clients.

We’re working with a lot of food factories and we have also worked with cosmetic companies like L’Oréal and with pharmaceutical companies. We have done work for the City of Nice, France, cleaning water from its entire watershed.

We won an international competition to get that project. We have many other clients besides.

Municipal Water Leader: Have you worked at all in the United States?

Eli Cohen: Yes and no. I was invited to give some talks in New York City in 2007 and met people from the city government and even got two jobs there. One had to do with a lake near LaGuardia Airport and another was at a complex in Long Island City. I was also in touch with a big manufacturing company in California regarding the design of one of their logistics centers and with a company from Texas about water flowing out of a meat processing plant. Unfortunately, the 2008 market crash killed all those projects.

Last year, I was in Washington, DC, and met some utilities at a meeting with the World Bank. My impression is that the technology is interesting to them and has the potential to save them a lot of money. The Potomac River receives a lot of unclean water from a local sewage treatment plant. If we can create a buffer zone at the outlet, we can change the face of the river. A few weeks ago, I got a call from Colorado from a city that doesn’t want its water chlorinated. Our system can dramatically reduce pathogenic elements without chlorine, instead using complex natural processes in the substrate media aided by a natural additive in the last flow zone that has been proven to eliminate pathogens completely.

We believe that these are the solutions of the future. They can enable us to improve the environment and our lives without changing our daily habits. Climate change’s effects are knocking on our door, and all we need is more attention and awareness and a willingness to change our mindset. M Eli Cohen is the CEO of Ayala. He can be contacted at office@ayala-aqua.com.

PHOTO COURTESY OF AYALA.

Eli Cohen: Our largest system is in New Delhi, India. We finished the design for that about a year ago. It will serve about 8 million people and will treat around 250,000 cubic meters (202 acre-feet) of water a day, which is a lot of water. New Delhi tried a number of other methods. It had problems with its large sewage treatment plants because they required a lot of energy. The bigger problem was conveying the sewage to the central treatment plant. Building pipes and pumps through the middle of the city would be expensive and logistically impossible. Today, most of the

sewage just runs freely into the Yamuna River. That’s why they asked us to design a sustainable, nature-based solution.

We created a design called the Tree of Life, which will be like a park that actually joins the city and the river and also treats sewage by gravity. This active park will also harvest, treat, and recycle storm water, preventing floods downstream and reducing the city’s carbon footprint.

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Mapal’s Floating Fine Bubble Aeration Technology

Mapal’s FFBA at a facility owned by the Merom Galil Regional Council, Upper Galilee, Israel.

S

econdary wastewater treatment requires providing oxygen to bacteria in wastewater so that they remove the dissolved contamination from it. Providing this oxygen to the bacteria is called aeration. In general, there are two types of aeration: mechanical surface aeration, which uses a mechanical impeller to spray water into the air and tends to be inefficient and to suffer from maintenance and health and safety issues, and fine bubble aeration, which involves releasing tiny bubbles from diffusers fixed to the bottom of a reactor. The Israeli company Mapal Green Energy, based in Kibbutz Yagur, has come up with a new take on the latter method. Its floating fine bubble aeration (FFBA) system uses an easily removed floating device to inject wastewater with fine bubbles from above through diffusers that are suspended from the water surface. This system is significantly more efficient than surface mechanical aeration and is easier to maintain than a floor-fixed system.

In this interview, Mapal’s cofounder and chief executive officer (CEO), Zeev Fisher, tells Municipal Water Leader about the benefits of FFBA and Mapal’s work around the world.

Zeev Fisher: I’m a mechanical engineer. I grew up in Israel and graduated from Ben Gurion University in Beersheba.

30 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about Mapal as a company.

Zeev Fisher: We’re a small company with 10 employees, based in Kibbutz Yagur in northern Israel. We are not a big engineering, procurement, and construction contractor that does everything; we are a niche company with a specialty in aeration technology for municipal and industrial biological wastewater treatment. We have developed a technology that we call FFBA. Municipal Water Leader: Is the company owned by the kibbutz?

Zeev Fisher: No; I founded the company and the raised money from private investors in the United Kingdom, who now own the company. The kibbutz is just where our

PHOTO COURTESY OF MAPAL.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

All my experience is in the infrastructure business, including water, wastewater, and desalination projects. About 10 years ago, I identified an interesting technology which was still at an early stage. Because of my experience, I realized its potential for the wastewater treatment process, and I decided to found Mapal, which I did with a partner who is no longer active in the company; to raise money; and to slowly penetrate the global market.

ADVERTISEMENT office and manufacturing facility are located. Many water technology and irrigation companies have grown up in kibbutzim because they address the needs of these largely agricultural communities.

Municipal Water Leader: How does FFBA work?

Zeev Fisher: Aeration is the core of biological, or secondary, wastewater treatment, both municipal and industrial.

During biological treatment, we supply oxygen to the bacteria that naturally exist in wastewater, and the bacteria multiply and eat the dissolved contamination.

Wastewater contains two types of contamination: solids, or particles, and dissolved contamination. The solids and particles are removed during pretreatment, which is a simple process that uses the physical parameters of the particle: If the particles are light, they float and can be skimmed off the surface; if they are heavy, they sink and can be collected from the bottom; if they’re in between, they are called suspended solids and can be filtered or screened away.

Wastewater also contains dissolved contamination, including biological load, biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammonia, etc. That is removed by bacteria. This is a much more complicated process than the removal of solids, because the bacteria that are used are microorganisms—living creatures. You have to control the water for pH, temperature, retention time, oxygen, etc. There is a direct link between the amount of oxygen that the bacteria consume and their performance. To remove 1 kilogram (kg) of BOD, you need 1.1 kg of oxygen.

If you supply more than that, you waste energy; if you supply less than that, you won’t meet the effluent consent set by the local regulator or government.

There are two types of technology that are used to aerate wastewater. One is what we call mechanical surface aeration. This involves a mechanical device that floats or is fixed on a bridge or another structure. It has an electrical motor and a gearbox that drives an impeller that sprays wastewater into the air. The oxygen in the air then dissolves into the wastewater. The main problem with this system is that it consumes a lot of energy or, in other words, has a low oxidation efficiency. The other problem is that the electromechanical equipment is in the wastewater, so to maintain or repair it, you need to get in the water.

That creates maintenance issues and health and safety issues. Finally, there are odor issues, since you’re spraying wastewater into the air.

Recognizing these problems, about 15–20 years ago the industry developed a new technology, fine bubble aeration.

Instead of bringing the water to the air, it brings air to the water. A blower sits outside the water, takes atmospheric air, and pushes it through piping that is fixed to the concrete floor of the reactor and through rubber diffusers, usually made of high-density polyethylene membrane, creating hundreds of billions of fine bubbles that go up to the water

surface. As the air bubbles rise, the oxygen in them dissolves into the wastewater, supplying the bacteria with the right amount of oxygen needed for the process. The oxidation efficiency of fine bubble aeration is about twice as high as that of mechanical surface aeration. There are no moving parts in the water, so maintenance is minimal. Moreover, there is no spray, so there is less odor.

Where does Mapal come in? There are many existing lagoons and wastewater treatment plants that suffer from a lack of oxygen and in which the original equipment doesn’t work properly or needs to be upgraded to deal with increased loads caused by population growth. For these and many other reasons, there is demand for a device that can increase the oxidation capacity of an existing treatment site. However, upgrades to existing sites can be expensive.

Our FFBA device can be installed in any existing reactor or lagoon with minimal investment and bring it all the advantages of fine bubble aeration. Today our technology is mature, and we have global experience. In addition to Israel, we have worked in Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

Municipal Water Leader: Is the FFBA device used primarily to upgrade installations that previously used mechanical surface aeration?

Zeev Fisher: Our clients and potential clients fall into several markets. One of those markets is upgrading existing sites and lagoons to use fine bubble aeration. Another market is plants that are going to be upgraded but need a short- or mediumterm solution until that upgrade occurs. A third market is newly built plants for which the consultant and the client engineer specify that they want fine bubble aeration, but don’t want to have those plastic pipes and diffusers fixed to the floor.

If you do have a problem with a plant like that—if a pipe or membrane breaks—you need to drain the reactor to fix it. The Mapal FFBA device, on the other hand, is designed to be a completely retrievable system that can be lifted out of the water with no need to stop the process or to drain the reactor. That is a major advantage of our system. We’ve done a project for TasWater in Blackmans Bay, Tasmania, Australia, for which that was the specification. The general contractor won the design bid contract and chose our technology, and we designed a system that is completely retrievable with no winch or rails on the reactor walls whatsoever. The system is manufactured in Israel and shipped like a kit, and after it is assembled, the client lifts the device with a crane and puts it in the water with no need to stop the process. It is simple and easy. That allows the operator to increase oxidation immediately.

Municipal Water Leader: Are all the units manufactured in Israel?

Zeev Fisher: At the moment, yes. We find it most cost effective to manufacture in Israel, but when foreign markets MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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ADVERTISEMENT grow, in Australia for example, we may begin to manufacture locally. Presently, everything is manufactured in Israel and shipped inside a shipping container.

Municipal Water Leader: Can the operator of a reactor or a lagoon add more Mapal units to the reactor to make their process more efficient, or is there an optimal number of units that should be used?

Zeev Fisher: The efficiency of secondary biological treatment depends on several parameters, so it can’t necessarily be improved just by adding more oxygen. Other factors include retention time, the size of the lagoon or reactor, and the flow and load that are coming in. We can design a system that can be integrated into an existing plant given its constraints.

You should understand that the wastewater treatment industry is driven primarily by regulation. If there were no regulation, nobody would do anything. Regulations also need to be enforced and monitored to make sure that the effluent that is discharged to the environment meets the effluent consent parameters determined by local regulations and laws. When the final effluent does not meet the effluent consent parameters and a local regulator fines a plant manager or takes them to court, there is an immediate demand to solve the problem. In our experience, most of the time the problem is a lack of oxygen, and that is something we can help with. There are two kinds of solutions we can provide in that type of situation. One is capital expenditure on a project that exactly meet the client’s requirements for many years to come. The other is that we have rental units that can increase oxidation and increase the performance of the bacteria quite dramatically. We’ve done it in both the municipal and industrial sectors.

For example, there is a semiconductor manufacturing facility in Israel that has been having an issue with its effluent ammonia value. The operators came to us and said they urgently needed extra oxygen. We manufactured and supplied two units on a rental basis for 6 months, and that gave the operators enough time to plan a permanent solution. Right now, we’ve got rental units operating in Australia, Israel, and the United Kingdom.

Municipal Water Leader: Do you currently have any clients in the United States?

32 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

Municipal Water Leader: In what ways does Mapal’s solution save energy?

Zeev Fisher: As I said before, there are two types of aeration: mechanical surface aeration and fine bubble aeration. If we dive a little bit into the numbers, under standard conditions, mechanical surface aeration supplies 0.9–2.1 kg of oxygen per kilowatt (kW) and fine bubble aeration supplies 3.6–4.8 kg of oxygen per kW. This is what we call standard oxygen transfer efficiency. Just by looking at the numbers, you can see that fine bubble aeration delivers 1.7 to 5.3 times more oxygen per kW. There is a direct link between the oxygen requirements of the bacteria and their performance: To remove 1 kg of BOD, you need 1.1 kg of oxygen; to remove 1 kg of ammonia, you need 4.2 kg of oxygen. When a process engineer receives the requirements for a plant, they calculate its actual oxygen requirements, and from that, they calculate the standard oxygen requirements. That states how much oxygen needs to be supplied to the process to meet the effluent consent requirements. Since the oxygen demand is fixed by the process requirements, using a more efficient method of aeration saves energy. Based on our experience and the case studies we’ve done, we save 40–50 percent of the energy used by mechanical surface aeration.

Municipal Water Leader: What is your vision for Mapal?

Zeev Fisher: The issue of lack of oxygen is present all around the globe—it’s an endless market. We haven’t even touched China, India, or Latin America yet. There is demand in all those places for this sort of service because lagoon treatment is common there. Any industry that needs to treat contaminated water before discharging it is a potential client. We have experience in a wide range of industries: We’ve done oil refineries in Haifa, Israel; pulp and paper in South Africa and Indonesia; food and beverage in Israel and the UK; chicken abattoirs in South Africa; and pig-breeding plants in Israel.

Although we are a small company, our technology meets an important need that exists in municipal and industrial plants all over the world. M

Zeev Fisher is the cofounder and CEO of Mapal. He can be contacted at zeev@mapal-ge.com.

PHOTO COURTESY OF MAPAL.

Zeev Fisher: Not currently, though we have received several inquiries. The investigations that we’ve made suggest that there is a lot of potential for our technology in the United States, mainly in the Midwest, where there are a lot of lagoons that use mechanical surface aeration technology.

Replacing the surface aeration with our FFBA system could reduce their energy and maintenance costs. However, penetrating into new territory takes time and a lot of money: You have to convince people of the usefulness of a

new technology, you have to meet a lot of consultants, and you have to go to conferences. At the moment, Mapal is concentrating on its existing territory, but when we have the funds and the right financial structure to support going into the United States, we will be very happy to.

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Aqwise's proprietary carriers.

Aqwise’s Contributions to MBBR Technology

A

qwise—Wise Water Technologies Ltd. is a global company, based in Israel, that specializes in moving bed bioreactor (MBBR) technology, a wastewater treatment technology that holds strong advantages over competing technologies in certain applications. In addition to creating its own carriers—small, ingeniously designed plastic cylinders with nooks and crannies that provide large amounts of surface area for bacteria and biomass to attach to during the wastewater treatment process—Aqwise has the expertise to help design and operate plants that use these carriers in the best way possible. The company has offices in Europe, Asia, and the Americas and has delivered projects in 55 countries worldwide.

In this interview, Marc Krieger, Aqwise’s vice president of sales, tells Municipal Water Leader about Aqwise’s technology and the advantages it can bring to appropriate applications.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Marc Krieger: I have a background in geology and earth sciences and have a master’s degree in what today is called environmental engineering, then called sanitary engineering, from the University of California, Berkeley. I’ve been in this field for over 30 years. I’ve worked for private consultants and for an Israel-based company that specialized in membrane-technology water treatment systems, and I’ve been with Aqwise now for 8½ years. While my background is in engineering, today I do sales.

Marc Krieger: Aqwise is a global company with its headquarters in Israel. We’ve been around for 20½ years. We

34 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

Municipal Water Leader: How does Aqwise’s technology differ from other wastewater technology that people may be familiar with?

Marc Krieger: Aqwise’s in-house technology is MBBR. The world of aerobic biological treatment is divided between what are known as suspended growth technologies, the most common types being activated sludge and sequence batch reactors, and attached growth technologies, including trickling filters and MBBR. MBBR uses biomass carriers that are characterized by a high surface-area-to-volume ratio. They provide large surface areas on which bacteria and biomass can attach and grow in order to clean up the wastewater. MBBR technology has many advantages: It allows for smaller reactors and a treatment plant with a smaller footprint; it is also more efficient, more robust processwise, and better at sustaining hydraulic and toxic shocks in the waste stream. If you are treating wastewater that varies in its flow or quality, fixedfilm technologies, MBBR in particular, are more adaptable

PHOTOS COURTESY OF AQWISE.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about Aqwise as a company.

started as a small startup company in the field of wastewater treatment, developing MBBR technology, a specific kind of biological treatment technology for municipal and industrial wastewater. Over the years, we’ve expanded from being a specialist in MBBR technology and all its diverse applications to developing and implementing anaerobic wastewater treatment solutions utilizing carriers. We’ve also moved into the project-execution field. Today, Aqwise has a full range of expertise both as a technology provider and as a turnkey contractor for executing wastewater projects.

We have offices in Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom and have partners spread around the world whom we support from afar. The company has about 80 employees worldwide.

ADVERTISEMENT and more suitable to treat it. MBBR also performs better for nitrification, especially in cold-weather conditions. This is another common application in the municipal field. Because MBBR requires a smaller footprint, it is possible to upgrade or retrofit existing reactors from activated sludge to MBBR and achieve an increase in capacity within an existing volume without additional civil works.

Municipal Water Leader: Is Aqwise’s innovation primarily in the design of the carriers?

Marc Krieger: MBBR technology has been around for about 35 years and was initially developed in Scandinavia because of its suitability for cold-weather conditions.

Aqwise’s contribution has been to develop its own carrier with a characteristic geometry, size, and shape. Even more importantly, we have developed proprietary design tools that are suitable for our carriers. Designing an MBBR installation is not just about putting plastic carriers into a tank. You have to know what size tank to use, how to stage it, and what quantity of carriers is required to get the job done.

Our expertise goes beyond developing our own carrier and involves building the design tools and the knowledge to use these carriers in a way that will achieve the best results for our clients. There are other companies that manufacture carriers but don’t have the design tools to support a client in designing a plant so that the MBBR process functions in an optimal manner. This is our main advantage: We provide the complete design package to the client so that the plant will perform properly. Over the 20 years that we’ve been in business, we’ve provided our technology for close to 600 applications in over 55 countries worldwide. Our main strength lies in our experience and our knowledge of how best to use the carriers.

which the biomass can grow. That is more important than their physical size.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your downflow anaerobic carrier system (DACS).

Marc Krieger: The DACS is an anaerobic wastewater treatment technology that uses carriers to create a blanket of anaerobic sludge. Anaerobic treatment is used primarily in high-strength industrial wastewater treatment; it is not prevalent in the municipal sector. For food industries, beer breweries, pulp and paper factories, and bottling plants with high loads of organic material and high levels of chemical oxygen demand, there is an advantage to using anaerobic technology because it can generate biogas which can then be used to generate steam, hot water, or electricity.

DACS technology has certain advantages over conventional anaerobic technologies on the market. Its most common competitors are the upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) technology and the internal circulation reactor. Since in the DACS the biomass is attached to a blanket of carriers, there is no risk of losing your biomass or having it washed out of the anaerobic reactor, as there is with other technologies. DACS technology emerged from a joint venture between a Dutch group with previous experience in anaerobic technology and Aqwise, which eventually led to the creation of the Netherlands-based company Aqana. Aqana is a subsidiary of Aqwise and manages the anaerobic side of the business. We work together in our sales efforts and project execution.

Municipal Water Leader: What results have your clients seen from your technology?

Municipal Water Leader: How big are the individual carriers?

Marc Krieger: The main parameter of concern in designing an MBBR is what we call effective surface area: how much surface area is available for biomass to grow on within a certain volume of carriers. The numbers in the market range between 300 and 1200 square meters per cubic meter.

Aqwise carriers range from 650 to 800, which is considered on the high side. That means that with a relatively small amount of carriers, you have a high surface area and can achieve high treatment efficiency. Physically, the carriers are small cylinders, about 13 millimeters (mm) long and 13 mm in diameter. They are quite small, but they have lots of internal areas on

An MBBR reactor that uses carriers in its treatment process.

MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM

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ADVERTISEMENT Marc Krieger: The results are more or less dictated by what the client wants. Our clients will come to us and define their needs: They’ll tell us their flow, their inlet quality, and what they want to achieve. One main advantage of MBBR is that MBBR reactors are 30–40 percent smaller in volume in comparison with activated sludge reactors designed for the same parameters. For clients that have space limitations or that are dealing with high real estate values, saving land saves money. The other main advantage is the ability to retrofit existing plants from activated sludge to MBBR in

Municipal Water Leader: How expensive is it to retrofit an existing plant?

Marc Krieger: A retrofit has many components: civil works, piping works, and the purchase of the carriers. Costs will vary from site to site and from project to project, but the advantage of retrofitting an existing plant over the alternative of building a new one is obvious: You minimize your need for additional land and additional civil works. One of the challenges of retrofits is upgrading an existing plant while it’s still in operation. You can’t just close down a treatment plant in order to do an upgrade. It has to be done in such a way that the plant can continue to function during the retrofit.

Municipal Water Leader: How do you find new clients?

An MBBR treatment plant.

36 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

Marc Krieger is the vice president of sales at Aqwise. He can be contacted at marc@aqwise.com. For more information about Aqwise, visit www.aqwise.com.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF AQWISE.

order to increase capacity. This is a simple, low-cost way to expand the capacity of a treatment plant that does not require additional land or civil works. Other advantages that our technology provides are the ability to convert treatment plants that have been designed for secondary treatment only—meaning achieving biochemical oxygen demand and total suspended solids reduction—to also achieve biological nutrient removal (BNR) and low levels of total nitrogen.

That is important now because of the current focus on nitrogen levels in the environment. Plants can be converted from activated sludge to what we call integrated fixed-film activated sludge, which is an integration of activated sludge and carriers that delivers low nitrogen values in the effluent.

These are types of projects in which our technology can provide simple and relatively low-cost solutions to achieve what the client defines.

Marc Krieger: What’s important for us is to identify and find those specific applications and specific clients to whom MBBR technology would bring the most benefit.

We’re not looking to introduce MBBR to every treatment plant out there, but just to find those for which MBBR has significant advantages over other technologies. One of our special focuses is industries that are looking to expand their wastewater treatment plants and can use MBBR to do so with minimal space requirements. Another focus is municipalities that are looking to expand their plants or upgrade them to achieve BNR. This is happening the United States, but also in India, the Philippines, and countries in Southeast Asia. These are major markets for us.

There are also other niche markets in which MBBR is common. One of them is the aquaculture business. If you’re growing seafood or fish in ponds, MBBR is the technology of choice to achieve nitrification of the water so that it can be reused or recycled through fishponds. We also use MBBR for denitrification applications, for example, to denitrify groundwater in regions that suffer from high nitrate levels in their groundwater, including parts of California, Israel, and Italy.

Our workload is divided equally between industrial and municipal projects. Industrial projects tend to be smaller in terms of capacity but are more challenging with regard to quality issues. Municipal projects are larger in size but are quite standard in the water quality they aim to deliver.

While our work is split 50/50 between industrial and municipal projects, our engineer-procure-construct work focuses mostly on industrial projects. M

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