Creative Solutions for Water Supply and Precise Irrigation

planning irrigation and water supply systems is an interesting and challenging field. all the more so in developing countries where, beyond planning and supplying the equipment, we need to adapt solutions to various obstacles and unforeseen difficulties. therefore, planners of such a system must often show great creativity and flexibility throughout the process.

 

irri-al-tal has been part of the irrigation realm for years. its workers are experts at planning and setting up irrigation systems, as well as implementing water supply projects for various applications worldwide.
the company’s work method includes several stages, as they strive to find technical solutions and adapt products to each individual customer.

the staff endeavors to include products of israeli suppliers in their work – filtration systems, valves, controllers, drip lines, etc., whilst providing appropriate solutions for customers’ needs and requirements: whether faced with a logistics issue, a challenge involving control, or a request for an irrigation project with unique requirements.

 

regarding the company’s great ability to find the best alternative and to tailor a solution for each case, place and customer, two successful projects can attest that the company’s staff presided over their completion – one is water supply to a factory that manufactures raw materials for the plastics industry and the second is a precise irrigation system for cannabis growing.

 

 

the water supply project, located in ethiopia, consisted of providing a solution for a factory in the field of polymers for plastics. the project presented to the company was divided into two stages. during the first stage, the irri staff were requested to quickly provide water for the construction process of the factory and were faced with logistic challenges and time restrictions. tal, an agronomist at irri relates: “we drilled one well, installed pipes to carry the water from the well, allowing the construction to begin. some of the materials were flown by air to the destination, thereby preventing delays in setting up the project…” 
 

this project presented hydraulic challenges to the planners. the main issue facing irri-al-tal was the optimal choice for routing the pipes in a region where efficiency decisions needed to be made in terms of  the most intelligent use of energy when excavating in difficult soil and extreme topographic conditions, where great lengths of pipe would be laid down. similarly, we set up a central pumping station that pumps from a tank into which all the wells are connected. this station continuously supplies to the factory 400 cubic meters of water per hour.

“in the second stage of the project, this year,” tal continues, “we dug five additional wells, as the challenge this year is to install a sacada system that will operate the whole water system, untouched by human hands.

 

the sacada system will oversee and schedule all the well pumps, the supply pumps for the factory, as well as control the water levels of the containers and pools. it will also provide all the necessary protection and control of flow rates and pressure for the entire system.
the execution, tal notes, was accompanied by difficulties, as in any developing country, but as an experienced company, irri-al-tal is equipped with tools that enable coping with problems like these.

the second project demonstrates the company’s great capabilities, this time in the irrigation field, for a global company expert in medical cannabis and their project for growing cannabis in israel. “the customer,” says tal, “presented very high technical demands regarding the command and control systems. we planned the irrigation and control systems, including a very sophisticated water processing system which also integrates ultra-filtration.”

 

an additional request made by the customer was separating the various spaces within the greenhouse – each part of the greenhouse would include separate irrigation, fertilization, water care and drainage, since such separation enables easy, more precise follow-up and complete control of the growing process. but here’s the catch: the irri al tal team would have to integrate an industrial controller that could monitor many systems simultaneously.
another challenge was the requirement that the irrigation system would be installed on flooding benches. as a result, the greenhouse is operated autonomously by air pressure and is interconnected by tracks, with no human contact during the growing process, significantly reducing the number of employees and costs.
 

tal furthers relates: “growing cannabis requires several stages and many simultaneous operating systems. that is what the controller does. its job is to connect all the greenhouse systems, to synchronize them, to ascertain coordination between them and to make sure that each plant receives exactly what it needs at precise times. therefore, we requested to adapt a controller from industrial control systems.

for that purpose, we collaborated with mr. omri morag, one of israel’s leading experts in the field of control systems, in order to program a controller that would match the complex requirements.

we successfully handled all of the complexities and challenges this project entailed; the customer has expressed their satisfaction with our work.”