How a small Israeli company is changing the face of skiing in the Alps.
By MEREDITH PRICE LEVITTsnow heap 88 224(photo credit: Courtesy )
What costs NIS 7 million, weighs 30 tons, stands 11 meters high and is made in Israel?
Hint: It's not a weapon and it doesn't save lives.
Still don't know? A snowmaker, of course.
Far from being just another snow gun, this innovation can make snow in any temperature - even in hot, arid climates. In fact, the new invention was discovered, quite by accident, under the blistering South African sun by a team of engineers from IDE Technologies. Originally founded in 1965 by the government to solve acute water shortage problems, the company is best known for successfully desalinating seawater and providing drinking water to Eilat.
But to understand how IDE Technologies went from making drinking water with the famous Zarchin process to building multimillion dollar all-weather snowmakers, you have to start at the beginning.
After successfully vacuum freezing seawater in the late 1960s, the company diversified and branched out into the separation, concentration and/or purification of aqueous solutions. Today, it lays claim to a long list of cutting-edge, innovative technologies and machines that are in use all over the world, including mechanical vapor compression, multi-effect distillation, vapor compression concentrators, reverse osmosis and vacuum ice machines.
It is with the latter that the snowmaking story begins. For many years, mines around the world pumped chilled water into deep shafts to cool down the passages. The process was expensive and cumbersome as it required pumping the water back up to the surface, sometimes as far as four kilometers.
Fifteen years ago, IDE came up with a solution to the problem. Its vacuum ice machines put water in a vacuum under triple point conditions in which vapor, liquid and ice coexist. Part of the water evaporates, while the remaining liquid freezes. Under controlled conditions, the frozen water forms ice crystals that are lighter than water and easier to transport back to the surface. This saves energy, making cooling the mine shafts much more efficient and far less expensive.
"The idea of snowmaking crossed our way by accident," says Moshe Tessel, the manager of IDE's Refrigeration Department. In late 2005, after IDE had finished installing a VIM for a gold mine in South Africa, one of the senior Russian engineers on the team noticed that the quality of the ice resembled snow.
"I can ski on this," he declared. "Find me some skis!" Eventually, a rental ski equipment store was found in Johannesburg. Strapping on his boots, securing his poles and clicking into his skis, the engineer proceeded to test his claim on the artificial snow mound. After skiing down the mound of leftover slush, he pronounced it excellent quality. His Israeli colleagues, most of whom had never skied, looked on in sheer amazement.
"He was so insistent about it that we invited an Olympic coach from Finland down to South Africa to ski on it too and see if it was really high-quality snow," Tessel says. Once the Finnish coach gave the artificial snow a thumbs-up, IDE's CTO and executive vice president, Avraham Ophir, took a trip to the Alps.
"With global warming, the ski resorts were suffering from a loss of business. The one thing they must have to operate is snow," explains Tessel. Of course, having snow early in the season means making more money, but traditional snowmakers require temperatures below freezing to operate.
With IDE's snowmaker, resorts can be guaranteed snow even if the weather isn't cooperating. At first, the resort owners in the Alps were skeptical. They couldn't believe that an Israeli company was going to sell them high-quality, environmentally friendly snow. But after a handful of them flew to South Africa to see the snow with their own eyes, several resorts ordered an IDE snowmaker.
In late November, the first IDE snowmakers will be put into operation at two resorts in the Alps, one in Switzerland and one in Austria.
The IDE snowmaker can produce up to 1,900 cubic meters of snow per day relatively inexpensively. It doesn't require a lot of manpower thanks to a fully automated computerized system, and it just needs water.
Next year, IDE is hoping that resorts in the US will also place orders. You may be wondering why they aren't installing one at the Hermon, and the answer is simple. The Hermon has a local monopoly on skiing and no water source for the snowmaking machine. According to Tessel, the government refuses to finance a pump to bring the water in and the resort management is opposed to the idea.
"Our real clients are big ski resorts," says Tessel. "For them, snow is equal to money. In the past, if there was no snow and warm weather, they didn't have much to do other than pray. Now, we can guarantee them snow even without cold weather."
As ski resorts all over the world wait to see how the first IDE snowmakers will perform this season, the skeptics remain. On a recent trip to Canada to talk to resorts there, Tessel had difficulty even entering the country. "The immigration officer almost wouldn't let me in when I told her what I was doing there. 'An Israeli selling snow to the Canadians?' she asked with disbelief." In the end, after proving his official business with documents and photographs, Tessel was allowed to enter. Nevertheless, the incredulity is still widespread.
After all, who could blame the immigration officer for having a hard time believing his story? Israel selling snow to the Swiss sounds as ludicrous as someone trying to sell sand to Saudi Arabia.
If nothing else, IDE's snowmaker is certainly one of the most unexpected Israeli innovations to slide onto the slopes in a long time.
www.ide-tech.com
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