The disastrous pipeline rupture in the Arava provided an opportunity to test out new cleanup methods from Israeli academia.

In one of the worst environmental disasters in Israel’s history, between three and five million liters of raw crude oil gushed from a burst pipeline near the Evrona Nature Reserve in the Arava Desert on December 3 last year.

In the chaotic days that followed, nature authorities employed many methods in the desperate race to contain the four-mile river of toxic oil and mitigate the deadly damage it caused to the Evrona’s plants and wildlife. This emergency also provided an unexpected opportunity for Israeli innovators to test their solutions for treating contaminated soil, and results have been encouraging.

Prof. Yoel Sasson tells ISRAEL21c that he and Dr. Uri Stoin from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem set up a pilot trial together with the Swiss Man Oil Group (MOG) to test their breakthrough technology for treating contaminated soil. Less than a year ago, MOG licensed the solution from Yissum, the university’s technology-transfer company, and has been using it to clean up polluted sites from Siberia to Nigeria.

Sasson and Stoin’s chemical reagent spray quickly decomposes hydrocarbon molecules from the oil into carbon dioxide and water, which are safe in nature and sewage systems.

Sasson explains that six years ago, he and Stoin were focusing on a solution for detoxifying flue emissions from coal power plants. At the university’s Casali Institute of Applied Chemistry, their research team developed “scrubbers” containing oxidizing compounds to attack mercury and other toxic materials from flue emission and release leftover benign gases. (via Israel21c)

[Photo: JNF UK/YouTube]