Not Treading Water
This article, dedicated to the memory of the late Uzi Halevy, Honorary Fellow of the Technion, was published in the last issue of the Technion Magazine.
Chemical engineer Rafi Semiat and chemist Moris Eisen, both professors at the Technion, have developed an innovative water purification membrane. Technion graduate Uzi Halevy was enthusiastic – and promoted a $4.6 million investment in MemTech, the company that they founded. The result: MemTech’s first full scale commercial pilot plant is running in Israel and two others are to be built soon, one in the US and one in Canada.
Uzi Halevy
“The Technion is moving in the right direction – expanding the opportunities for commercialization of technological know-how developed there. It’s definitely going to provide attractive options for investment by businesses and individual investors. The Technion can only benefit from it – in all aspects.”
Technion graduate Uzi Halevy knows what he’s talking about. For decades, he has been contributing to the Technion and investing in Israel’s hi-tech industry, and he understands the importance of translating engineering concepts into commercial applications. This is the main reason why he and his wife founded The Uzi & Michal Halevy Fund for Innovative Applied Engineering Research, providing annual grants to Technion’s researchers , pursuing innovative applied engineering.
At the awards ceremony in 2013, a surprise awaited him. “When the winners were called to the stage, I saw that they were Professors Rafi Semiat and Moris Eisen, both of whom I have known well. The award was given to them for their development of a unique innovative membrane technology for seawater desalination pre filtering, for the treatment of gray water (‘used’ drinking water) and municipal wastewater. For me, this is a great example of the translation of an engineering concept into an actual product that helps the economy and society.”
The partnership between Professors Semiat and Eisen began some 10 years ago, when Professor Semiat headed the Technion’s Grand Water Research Institute. “In this partnership, we complement each other,” explains Professor Semiat. “Moris comes from organic chemistry and I’m from engineering. Thus we developed a new type of membranes that allow water to pass at higher flow rate-flux than is currently being experienced in the industry and filtering out a very wide range of large molecules – as well as six orders of magnitude of concentration of bacteria and four orders of magnitude of viruses.”
When they came on stage to accept the award, Semiat and Eisen told about their promising development, which by then did not succeed to gain commercial momentum due to budgetary constraints. “At that time, we had a faltering start-up,” says Semiat, “and when we told Uzi about it, he immediately became enthusiastic. After careful examination with the president of Mem-Tech , and after several meetings with water technology experts at Mekorot, which is a strategic partner in the company, he decided to invest his money and recruit additional investors. This incremental investment – $4.6 million – gave us a tremendous boost. That’s how we achieved a breakthrough in wastewater , drinking water treatment and whey water filtration.
As part of its municipal wastewater treatment activity, the company – MemTech – was awarded early this year, a contract for installing a full scale semi-industrial experimental pilot plant at Hagihon Company, the Jerusalem Municipality’s water corporation. “In this experiment, we examined the effectiveness of the new wastewater treatment membranes, by comparing the performance to commonly used industrial membranes with exceptional results , approaching 80% improvement.” In addition, the company, together with Mekorot, has been awarded contract for the installation of a pilot plant similar to the Gichon pilot plant to be installed in the city of Akron, Ohio in early 2016 ,as part as a joint $3.5 million water project between the Israeli government and the city of Akron. Mem-Tech was informed in early September of the intent to award another Gichon type pilot plant to be installed in Montreal Canada as part of the Joint Canadian Israeli research project.
The company recently signed another contract [with a dairy in Israel] for filtering whey – the residue created in the production of cheese. “In the process, in addition to cleaning through filtration the whey water ,prior to discharge to the sewer in full compliance with the environmental regulations , we also help in collecting the residual cream and protein from the waste water. For every 100 cubic meters per day of whey water – a capacity typical of small and medium size dairies – the dairy recovers substantial amount of valuable products-protein and cream with a nice profit.
Steadfast devotion to the Technion
Uzi Halevy was born in Israel to a veteran Jerusalemite family – I’m an 11th generation Jerusalemite.” His father was Dr. Asher Halevy, one of Israel’s first civil engineers. “He participated in the construction of British high Commissioner palace , the Rockefeller Museum and the multiple British Tigert police fortresses .He was appointed by David Ben Gurion to managed the construction of the government main office complex in Jerusalem, the old Knesset building and the new Knesset building. “I spent a lot of time with him at work,” says Halevy. “So it was natural for me to study civil engineering.” In 1956 he began studying Civil Engineering at the Technion, but a year later the Technion’s Department of Nuclear Engineering was founded – and he was transferred. After earning his degree (Mechanical Engineering and Nuclear Engineering), he worked at the United Steel Mills complex (Kiryat Haplada) in Acre and later at the newly built Israel Petrochemical Enterprises Ltd. At the end of design and construction the Ethylene plant he wanted to enrich his experience at this field at the USA , and at age of 28 he went to work for Litwin Engineering, in Wichita Kansas .In September 1964 he was instrumental in opening a an engineering consulting branch of Litwin for the oil refineries and petrochemical industry in Israel .In 1980 Halevy was appointed president of Litwin’s international engineering group, which employs more than 2,500 engineers and technicians through out the world. He still lives in Houston.
Twenty-five years ago, Halevy joined the ranks of the ATS (American Technion Society), and has been a member of the Board of Governors of the Technion for the past 12 years. In addition to the innovation award, which he founded with a $1 million investment, he has left the Technion over $1 million in his will, and encourages his children to follow in his footsteps. “The Technion is very important to me, so I have decided to donate my shares in MemTech to the Technion as well. I hope that other Technion alumni who have succeeded in their professional careers will follow my lead and support the Technion.”