About Us

Meisol Ltd. is a startup company dealing with groundwater and soil contamination. The company was founded in March 2008 based on technology developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Groundwater is the main source of available drinking water worldwide, but year after year, consequences of human activity jeopardize its pristine quality. Once an aquifer has become contaminated, the water may be unsafe to drink and the contamination may migrate to other areas. Halogenated organic compounds are common soil, sediment and groundwater pollutants. Until the end of the 1960s, halogenated compounds were applied in a wide variety of agricultural and industrial processes, exploiting their stability and resistance to chemical and biological degradation. 

It is now recognized that these properties, which are essential to industry, have devastating effects on the environment. These compounds are known as persistent chemicals (with half-lives ranging from days to 10,000 years), and considered to be toxic and carcinogenic. Meisol has developed a new composite material for remediation of contaminated groundwater and soil. The composite material is formed by bonding nano-sized zero-valent iron (NZVI) particles with metalloporphyrin catalysts onto a diatomite matrix. The composite shows catalytic activity toward different contaminants, especially to halogenated organic compounds which are common soil and groundwater pollutants. This material offers many advantages - it is environmentally-friendly, it can treat simultaneously a large spectrum of contaminants, and it may be more cost effective than current technologies due to its high efficiency. 

Laboratory experiments showed that carbon tetrachloride, heavy metals such as hexavalent chromium, pesticides, PCE, and TCE were degraded by this new composite material. It also has the potential to catalytically transform nitrates and perchlorate.

Market

The Department of Defense (DOD) in United States has targeted approximately 9,000 sites for remediation, 71% of which have contaminated groundwater and 67% have contaminated soil. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are the most prevalent groundwater contaminant, occurring at 74% of the DOD groundwater sites, with halogenated volatile organic compounds (HVOCs) often representing the highest percentage of VOC contamination. According to the DOD, the other prevalent contaminant groups in groundwater are metals, which appear in 59% of DOD groundwater sites. This means that the water supplier – Mekorot, the local authority, and the water association – must install some treatment equipment at the drillings. The proposed technology, based on the developed composite material, may be suitable for these suppliers and commercial sites with groundwater and soil contamination. On the roughest calculations (on the basis of 30% contaminated wells), the quantity of water (only in Israel), which requires treatment, can reach 300-400 MCM per year.

Team

Osnat Merom Jacob (PhD) CTO

Prof. Brian Berkowitz -
Weizman Institute of Science - Consultant

Dr. Yishai Dror -
 Weizman Institute of Science - Consultant