- ZARCHIN, ALEXANDER
- ZARCHIN, ALEXANDER (1897–1988), Israeli engineer and inventor. Zarchin was born in Zolotonosha in the Ukraine. After graduating from the Leningrad Technical Institute, he was a member of its staff until 1934. He was imprisoned for a time in a labor camp. He took out patents for evaporative drying, distillation, separation of oxygen from air, and, more importantly, for a freezing process for desalination of water. Zarchin went to Palestine in 1947. His desalination process was developed in Israel and used experimentally to supply water to the town of Eilat. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Desalination Plants Ltd., Desalination Plants Ltd: Developers of Zarchin Process (1962); Tidhar, 14 (1965), 4518–20. (Samuel Aaron Miller)
Encyclopedia Judaica. 1971.