Lilach Katzir

Dr. Meyer L. Rosoff and Rev. Benzion Bauer Prize for Excellence in Water Research, 2006

My name is Lilach Katzir, and I am a M.Sc. student at the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, department of environmental engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. I was born in 1981 in Rishon-Le-Zion, and from there my family and I moved to Yavne Israel, where I have lived most of my life. As a child, my family moved to the south of Israel to Ramon air base witch I lived there four years of my live and then I feel in love in the Negev. The first three years in school I did here in Sde-boqer.   From Ramon base we moved back to Yavne, witch there I spent my high school years at "Ginsborg, Yavne" witch there I with matriculation in biology and chemistry. During this time I was involved in the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.

After leaving the army I went to be a "SHLICA" of the Jewish Agency in the U.S.A, in a summer camps of Bnai Brith in Pennsylvania, witch I did to summer in aero. After the first summer camp I want to traveled to in Central America. On my return I wanted to do my first degree in Geology-hydrology at Ben-Gurion University. After completion of my first degree, I travel for two month to India.

When I got back and started my M.Sc. studies in environmental engineering, and decided to study in the Desalination & Water Treatment at the ZIWR.

My current research involves investigating a new technology named WAIV- Wind Aided Intensified Evaporation for Reduction of Desalination Brine Volume.

Description of research:

WAIV- Wind Aided Intensified eVaporation for desalination brine volume reduction

and for mineral byproducts.

Supervisor: Dr. Jack Gilron

One of the challenges to inland desalination plants in arid regions is the question of brine disposal. Evaporation ponds proposed for brine disposal present an environmental burden because of the large area required and the risk of contamination of ground and aquifer.

WAIV is a new proprietary technique that exploiter the wind energy to get maximum evaporation of the brine disposal in minimum energy and minimum lend area while checking the fusibility of getting minerals byproduct and reuse them for the industry. Previous studies on a pilot unit with 3 l-43 m2 evaporation surface showed that evaporation rates (L/D-m2 evaporating surface) can reach up to 90% of those of open water surfaces.

The WAIV concept involves increasing the evaporative capacity per footprint area by close packing vertically mounted and wetted surfaces and exposing them to the dry winds of the semi-arid regions. These surfaces are cooled to near the wet bulb temperature and the temperature gradient between the warmer wind and the cold-water surface drives heat flux to the wetted surface. The vapor pressure gradient drives the evaporation mass transfer from the surface.

Comparison of field results to the literature show that the WAIV evaporation behavior qualitatively follows the meteorological evaporation correlations given for evaporation ponds. In this current research we billet a pilot WAIV plant. In this pilot we are checking the ability of the WAIV to evaporate very concentrated brine (TDS ) from BWRO and from ED, to see the differences between the brines.

We check the fusibility to restore the minerals from the brine by differential precipitation of the minerals and to collect the les soluble minerals (MgCl2 and CaCl2) for reuse. With a thermodynamic equilibrium concentrated brine  software (OLI systems Inc.) we can get an indication witch minerals will participate at different point of the evaporation and we can compeer it  to the minerals that we get in the end of this process , this we check in ICP (mass balance) SEM and XRD.

	Results of evaporating of BWRO ED 10% TDS brine show that it is feasible to concentrate such brines mach more then evaporation ponds.			Result from a very consorted brine TDS = 25% we can see that the concentration of NaCl in the solution is decreasing  thanks to the perception on the wetted surface will all the other minerals concentration increase

Future work:

To compeer between  all kind of brine: different recovery rate, with/without pretreatment,  with/without anti scalant and to compeer the different minerals that we are getting from this treatments.