Fresh from British success with its aeration recycling system, Israeli green tech firm Mapal Green Energy recently signed its first major contract in Australia – supplying a system to beverage maker Schweppes to clean up industrial waste from its factories throughout the country.
As published in No Camels;
Mapal will work with a local engineering firm to design an aeration system for installation at bottling plants belonging to Schweppes, which has a huge operation across Australia. Mapal will supply the equipment and operate the water purification equipment it installs.
In a Mapal system, bubbles – water infused with air – are used to clean water as part of aeration systems, removing pollutants and separating sludge from water. The treatment removes nearly all the solid waste and pollutants, allowing water providers to purify and recycle water quickly and efficiently.
Among water professionals, bubbles are considered one of the more effective ways of treating sewage and water suffering from industrial pollution. But bubble purification systems haven’t been popular because they are generally limited to use in smaller, man-made pools and lagoons.
In a bubble purification system, a machine pumps oxygen into waste-water to enhance “aerobic digestion,” a bacterial process occurring in the presence of oxygen, in which bacteria consume organic matter and convert it into carbon dioxide, which is then released into the atmosphere.
But traditional aeration systems have limitations. In order to get the bubbles to all parts of the waste-water, water utilities have relied on mechanical aeration (large machines that are stationary or mobile that make bubbles by agitating the water) or jet aeration (jets pushing air into the water). Both are expensive to run, requiring large amounts of energy to diffuse the air into the water; in addition, jet aeration, while a little cheaper, is suitable only for small concrete-lined pools or lagoons.
Mapal’s system solves all these problems, according to company CEO Ze’ev Fisher. Mapal’s idea is to use floating aerators that “travel” across the surface of the water, diffusing oxygen throughout the pool (up to a depth of six meters). Unlike floating mechanical diffusers, the Mapal version has a series of tubes that extend into the water, requiring far less energy to push the oxygen into the lower depths of the water and ensuring that the oxygen gets to all parts of the wastewater.
Mapal recently took part as an Israeli startup in The BRIDGE: Israel-Australia Investment Summit in November 2015. Well done to Ze’ev and the team at Mapal for establishing this partnership in Australia!
israeltrade.org.au 