Visit the seawater turning factory into the world's largest freshwater

Sorek seawater desalination plant provides more than 600,000 m3 of drinking water every day, meeting 20% ​​of the total domestic water for Israel.

The plant turns salt water into the world's largest freshwater in Israel

The 10-hectare factory complex, located in Sorek, western Israel, is about 15 km from Tel Aviv. This is the area bordering the Mediterranean Sea.

The Sorek factory was built by IDE Technologies at a cost of US $ 400 million and went into operation in 2013.
Avshalom Felber, CEO and president of IDE, said the group built many desalination plants in 40 countries around the world. In Israel, they built 5 plants, providing more than 65% of Israel's domestic water supply. Sorek, the world's largest desalination plant, supplies 20% of the domestic water for Israel.
The plant uses RO filtration technology.

The process of turning seawater into drinking water is done through four stages at Sorek.In the first stage, seawater drawn from the sea is put into a tank to filter oil, remove garbage.

Every day the Sorek factory absorbs 1.2 million cubic meters of water from the sea about 3 kilometers from the plant, through two huge underground pipes, which are about the same size as the pipes in the image.

In the second stage, seawater is introduced into filter tanks through sand.In this process, the water is added with chemicals so that small molecules float into larger blocks, causing them to clog the filtered sand.

At the end of this treatment period the water is tested to determine whether it is clean enough to enter the desalination stage.

Desalination phase is considered the backbone of the whole process, when the water runs through the filter membrane, which separates the water molecule from the salt molecule.

The whole process is closed and controlled and monitored by computer.

At the end of this process, half of the water goes into the nation's drinking water system, half of which is returned to the sea. Salt water is brought back to the sea through a large pipe equivalent to two inlets.
Felber said that the water after salt separation is too "clean", not good for health, so the Israeli government's Desalination Authority has asked for more minerals.The final water product of the plant is similar to mineral water.

According to Felber, the Desalination Authority established a continuous water monitoring system over the network.The system automatically samples and analyzes each batch of filtered water, before putting water into the national supply system.