Israeli company provides Gaza with high-quality drinking water
The Gaza Strip, that small territory along the Mediterranean coast that borders Israel and Egypt, has been facing the problem of drought and lack of drinking water for many years. It is absurd to think that in 2021 there are still these kind of difficulties, the poor infrastructure and the lack of rainfalls have worsened the nightmare of the water crisis that two million people are now forced to live every day.
According to many researches and studies carried out, only 3% of the water in the Gaza Strip can meet internationally established standards and this has led to a significant increase in health problems among Gaza population. Also for this reason, the European Union is collaborating and supporting a project to desalinate seawater.
However, there is a really positive news. An Israeli company founded in 2009, Watergen, has built an energy-efficiently system to produce drinking water. The team of biologists, engineers, physicists and chemists worked to design something that could be able to obtain clean water from the air, through a biochemical process, thus also eliminating the use of bottled water.
The innovative and hi-tech Watergen product exploits the unlimited resource of air by capturing its humidity and then transforming it into clean water, the device can produce from five thousand to six thousand litres of water per day (the amount depends, of course, on the humidity level in the air). Currently, the Israeli company has donated two of these machines to the Gaza Strip, each costs about 50 thousand euros.
The functioning of the water dispenser involves several steps. The built-in blower draws air from the atmosphere, then some internal filters remove both dirt particles and dust thus allowing only clean air to enter the device. At this point, the air passes through the heat exchanger which produces the condensation of the water. In this way, water passes through the mineralization and purification of food grade filtration systems and here a UV lamp decomposes harmful chemicals and destroys microorganisms. In addition, the machine is equipped with a tank to store the water which is kept clean and fresh thanks to the UV lamp. At the end of the process, drinking and high quality water flows from the tap and is ready to drink.
There is still a long way to go, but today Gaza inhabitants can hope for a better future in which drinking clean water will no longer be the main daily problem.
“Our goal is that everyone on Earth could be supplied with this drinkable water. But of course, when this situation happens close to you, you feel it and it is more visible. It was immediately clear we had to help first our neighbours, and then to spread it around the world”, said Watergen founder and current CEO, Michael Mirilashvili. “We will provide humanity with a renewable source of high-quality drinking water, extracted from the air, making it available anywhere, on demand and at a reasonable cost”.
