New evidence of a global water crisis emerges almost daily.
The United States’ second-largest water reservoir, Lake Powell, dropped to its lowest level in almost 60 years last winter. Venice’s scenic canals dried up while France went more than a month without significant rainfall.
Meanwhile, drought conditions around the world continue to threaten agriculture, wildlife and public health.
The global water supply is at risk and the crisis seems to be accelerating faster than solutions can be developed. And yet, remedies are emerging — most notably through CoWERC, a global collaboration co-founded by scientists at the Northwestern Center for Water Research and in Israel, a nation that has long been at the forefront of water innovation.
After sounding the alarm about its shrinking freshwater supply more than a decade ago, Israel now desalinates about 75 percent of its drinking water from the Mediterranean. It’s also a world leader in recycling its wastewater, using almost 90 percent for agricultural irrigation and other purposes.
These advances are the focus of Northwestern’s annual Global Engineering Trek to Israel (GET), an annual study abroad tour co-organized by the university’s Israel Innovation Project and the Center for Water Research, and supported by McCormick Global Initiatives and the Institute for Sustainability Energy in the Northwest (ISEN). The hike allows students to travel to Israel to learn about the latest advances in sustainable water management.
“For me it was amazing that Israel was able to implement practical solutions [to its water crisis] so fast,” said Peter Pinder, a junior major in civil engineering who traveled to Israel on the GET trip last fall. “Their ability to create change and reverse this problem to the point that they are the global leaders in this space is quite impressive.”
A full view of the water-power system
CoWERC – the US-Israel Collaborative Water-Energy Research Center – was founded three years ago by the Northwestern and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.
“We have a wide range of expertise that allows us to take a fairly broad view and then focus on the most impactful work,” said Aaron Packman, co-director of CoWERC and director of the Center for Water Research.
Water and energy are inextricably linked, said Packman, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering. Purifying and distributing water requires significant amounts of energy, while water is essential for energy production. And wastewater itself contains a significant amount of energy.
Innovation and efficiency in each of these processes can have an exponential impact on the cycle, producing more water for human consumption and agriculture, and more energy for a multitude of other purposes.
Convert waste water into energy
Wastewater, while not drinkable, contains nutrients. It is also full of energy that can be used for other purposes.
That’s why George Wells, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and his team are working to change the way we see wastewater – from just “sewage” to something used for energy, fertilization and other purposes can.
Wells’ lab is developing a new technology called CANDO+P that can recover nutrients from wastewater while producing clean water for reuse. This process removes nitrogen in a way that allows it to be used for bioenergy, while recovering phosphorus in a form that can be reused as fertilizer.
Innovative approaches like CANDO+P have huge potential to break down the barriers to wastewater reuse, Wells explained.
“These new technologies ultimately offer a path to truly circular water management,” he said. “This vision is critical not only for Israel and the US, but for sustainable water stewardship worldwide.”
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