Alexander Zarchin
(My grandfather, Moises Zarchin's fisrt cousin)
Fresh water from the sea*
"The Israel Sea Water Conversion Commission has been experimenting with desalting technology for years. Two desalination plants have been built on the Red Sea at Elath. One is an oil-fired, dual-purpose distillation plant, producing 1,125,000 gallons of fresh water a day and 6,000 kilowatts of electricity. The same steam that turns the turbine generators supplies the heat that evaporates fresh water from the brine. The second and smaller plant -- 265,000-gallons-a-day -- separates salt from water by a vacuum freezing process developed by the 75-year-old Israeli engineer, Alexander Zarchin.
The Zarchin process is based on the principle that as seawater is frozen, the growth of ice crystals expels the salt and other impurities. A salt water film that coats the otherwise pure ice crystals is washed off, and the ice is melted. Zarchin believes his process is the most efficient because the energy needed to freeze water is one-seventh that required to boil an equivalent amount for distillation. However, the Israeli government has not yet accepted his process for large-scale desalting."
*Science Year -- The World Book Science Annual, 1967, Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1967
*From the Encyclopaedia Judaica:
Last Update: 7/10/98
Web Author: A.S. Waldinger
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