Mekorot is interested in remaining at the forefront of engineering know-how in the fields of protecting water quality and water treatment.
Accordingly, the company continuously conducts engineering experiments, surveys and studies in these areas. This research is conducted by both company employees and at the request of, or in collaboration with, external scientific bodies.
These include Israeli and other universities, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, other research institutes and scientists with specialties in specific fields.
Research initiatives, which are proposed by company employees and external entities, are examined by professional committees with decisions to implement them being made by the company’s Supreme Committee for Engineering Surveys and Research.
Criteria used by the committees in examining proposed studies include the expected benefit from the research to improved water quality, potential for attaining innovative know-how and obtaining new and efficient treatment and test methods.
Each survey or study is assigned a company employee who is responsible for following its execution as well as its timetable, quality of execution and budgetary compliance.
Each year, professional committees examine new research proposals and the results of research conducted during the previous year, providing recommendations to the Supreme Committee regarding the allocation of budgets for them.
Over the past decade, more than 450 different studies and surveys have been conducted within the framework of Mekorot's research program.
Mekorot’s R&D projects focus on the following areas:
- Water quality: improvement of water quality through the development/investigation of cutting-edge disinfection and treatment methods; R&D to support the deployment of the National Filtration plant; development of continuous water monitoring systems.
- Continuous water supply: improvement of the reliability of the water supply through advanced control and optimization technologies with more efficient infrastructures.
- Water sources: expansion of available water throught the improvement of Mekorot’s desalination and rain augmentation technologies); integration of desalinated water into the National Water Carrier.
- Water treatment: investigation and development of cutting-edge technologies; optimization and upgrade of existing plants.
- Desalination: continual upgrade of existing technologies and development of new technologies (for both seawater and brackish water plants).
- Management systems for improved control and optimization of all processes.
- Water security: development of methodologies for monitoring water sources.