Israel powers up a new round of EUREKA grants – two make electricity from municipal water supplies
A €33 million fund to help fuel the development of 25 projects in renewable energy, biotechnology and clean-tech industrial manufacturing across Europe was announced by the EUREKA network at a meeting in Israel Sunday. Since Israel’s chairmanship that began last fall, two of Israel’s most remarkable innovators have been paired with EU firms to facilitate prototype development.
Israel is taking its turn to be the chair of the EU’s pan-European R&D clean-tech grants machine EUREKA, and a sense of urgency in finding new sources of energy is understandable. After all Israel is really on the front lines of the danger of oil dependence, located amid spreading unrest in Libya and other Middle Eastern countries, while oil prices begin their rise once more.
EUREKA is an intergovernmental organization now representing 40 countries to promote the collaboration in industrial innovation and research and development across the European and Mediterranean region, and chairmanship rotates among member nations. Israel took over the chairmanship in the fall and has paired two innovators with EU firms.
Solaris Synergy was grouped with the EDF Group from France to prototype its floating solar panels for large industrial or municipal bodies of water, such as reservoirs, which protect valuable land area for other needs.
Leviathan was another of the earliest EUREKA funding recipients. Paired with Italy’s ENCO Engineering Consultants, an international civil engineering consultancy that does feasibility studies and testing, and Fontana, the three received a shared grant of over €1 million to prototype a revolutionary water energy turbine that is installed inside the municipal infrastructure of pipelines and water ways.
Leviathan’s Benkatina turbine makes energy out of the routine movement of any type of water, from waste water to industrial runoff, flowing through gutters and drainage canals between cities and underneath them. Municipal waterways provide a surprisingly consistent source of water energy.
Both firms make energy using an often-overlooked source of energy: municipal waterways, those necessary bodies of water, just doing their routine jobs storing and moving water.
Both harness municipal water to do double duty as an energy source.
Image: M Kannan
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