Israel Matzav: Another awesome new Israeli technology

Another awesome new Israeli technology

The Economist reports on another awesome new Israeli technology. This one... fixes leaky pipes?

Much of the wasted water is lost through what the International Water Association, an industry body, calls “background leakage”—that is, small but widespread cracks that drip water continuously. Indeed, background leakage is so pervasive that water suppliers accept 3,500 litres of water per kilometre of pipe per day as the minimum achievable loss. Short of replacing the entire water main, which is both expensive and disruptive, the only way to cut background leakage below these levels has been to reduce the water pressure.

Curapipe’s system piggybacks, as it were, on the system of “pigs” commonly used to clean urban water mains. This cleaning regime works by suspending the supply for a couple of hours while a bullet-shaped, spongy object allegedly resembling a pig is inserted into the pipe and then forced through it using water pressure, taking mineral scale and sediment with it.

The device developed by Curapipe consists of a train of two pigs with a viscous composite trapped between them. This composite acts as the sealant. The train is forced through the system in the usual way. When it reaches a crack, the sealant is sucked out of the train and into the crack in the same way that water is lost. The composite fills the crack and then hardens in situ. Once the pipe has been flushed, the water supply can be restored.

And it does even more than that.

Read the whole thing.

Israel Matzav: Another awesome new Israeli technology