Just got funded – A new PRIMA project

Just before the beginning of 2023, the “PRIMA” program in which Dr. Roey Egozi and Dr. Roy Posmanik involved as the Israeli partners was awarded. The program coordinates initiatives from the Mediterranean basin to prevent surface and groundwater bodies from agricultural non-point source pollution The program combines technological and modeling tools and includes partners from Italy, Spain, France, Morocco and Israel. The Israeli part of the program will be carried out as part of the Nahalel stream restoration project in the model farm. In the area, there is a tendency for over-fertilization and spillage of untreated manure from Neve Ya’ar’s feedlot, which challenge the sustainability of the interface between the stream and the agricultural activity. In the project, a farm-scale anaerobic digestion facility will be established to improve the farm/stream interface by adopting decentralized agricultural waste management methods. The digestion facility will be combined with a supplementary treatment for nitrogen recovery in a biofiltration unit and a “polishing” treatment for effluents in a constructed wetland so that the risk of downstream pollution with excess nutrients will be minimized. In addition to energy recovery (as biogas by anaerobic digestion), the integrative treatment will provide an added value by recovering nitrogen and phosphorus for fertilization and soil amendment. In addition, bioreactors will be installed in the buffer strip between the agricultural fields and the stream, in an area where there are large loads of nutrients. The bioreactors are passive treatment systems for surface runoff and groundwater pollution. The technology will enable a gradual reduction of the concentrations of nitrate, phosphorus (and even pesticides) in the ground water by flowing part of the drainage and/or runoff volumes through an artificial porous medium.