Tirat Zvi, a kibbutz that sits just west of the Jordan River, is the largest date-palm grower in Israel, with 18,000 trees.
The water used to irrigate these trees and other crops grown on the kibbutz come from two sources: a potable water line, the ‘sweet line’, supplied by Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, at a high cost and a kibbutz-owned well that pumps saline water from the aquifer. As a result, the customer was required to mix expensive potable water with less expensive, high salinity water, in order to obtain an optimal balance between water quality and cost while maximizing crops quality and saving water.

To achieve an optimal balance between water quality and cost, while also maximizing crop quality and saving water, Tirat Zvi mixes the expensive potable water with the less expensive, but highly-saline, water from the well. This takes place at a mixing junction on the kibbutz’s water irrigation supply line. However, the existing third-party hydraulic valve was not optimizing salinity levels. What’s more, since the pressure level varies between the two branches which feed in water from Mekorot and from the well respectively, an additional challenge arose regarding how to achieve higher pressure levels in the well branch.

Our goal was to provide a smart solution, to be installed on the existing water infrastructure, that would ensure the optimal salinity level and balance the pressure of the two branches.