Research & Development
In line with the WFI Group vision to leverage Israeli innovations to achieve clear water value and enhance public health and sustainability around the world, we invest over 30% of our budget in R&D.
Our highly skilled and devoted researchers, scientists, engineers and water experts have decades of multi-disciplinary experience. Together with the Group’s founders, they are driven to make a real difference for a more sustainable future for people everywhere. Our team has already developed breakthrough water and wastewater treatment technologies such as MAC, TAYA and Flow Reversal. Now we’re hard at work on the next generation of water innovation, including the technologies and solutions detailed below.
Ammonia Manure Removal –
extraction from agricultural wastewater
Ammonia is one of the most prevalent pollutants in agricultural wastewater. It is a significant threat to the environment as it acidifies soil and is highly toxic to aquatic life. On the other hand, it is also an effective fertilizer for intensive agriculture, and as such, is in high demand. The WFI team is working on solutions for efficient removal of ammonia from agricultural wastewater so that both the water and the ammonia can be reused, recovered and regenerated to valuable assets.
Nitrate Brine Removal –
converting pollution into valuable fertilizers
Our team is working on augmenting our selective pollutant removal to enable efficient nitrate removal. Although it is a pollutant in water, nitrate is also a valuable resource that can be converted into fertilizer. By efficiently extracting it from wastewater, companies can both reuse the water and utilize the nitrate.
We use a technique in which nitrate is removed with the conventional ion exchange (IX) process. The regeneration brine is then fed into our proprietary carbon-based reactor, where the nitrate is eliminated from the brine. This allows the brine to be reused for the regeneration process and the nitrate to be recovered as a high-quality potassium nitrate fertilizer. Conducted at near zero cost, this method enables our customers to shift from savings to growth
Perchlorate Extraction & Reuse –
converting pollution into clear water value
Perchlorate is another contaminate in water that is a valuable commodity as a raw substance, as it can be used as a propellant. We are developing a technique in which a chemical precipitation agent (PA) is added to water polluted by high perchlorate concentrations. The PA enables the extraction of the perchlorate, and the PA itself can be recovered for reuse. The operational costs of this perchlorate removal method can be as low as one-tenth of traditional extraction methods like biological reduction. The extracted perchlorate can be refined as potassium perchlorate for increased market value, creating an additional revenue stream.