Challenge: Breaking Supersaturation in Carnallite Brine

Israel Chemicals Ltd (ICL), the Seeker for this Challenge, extracts brine from the Dead Sea for the production of salt, potash, and other important minerals primarily through evaporation.

Dead Sea in Israel, aerial view. Image credit: Dave Herring via Unsplash, free license

At the end of this process, the end brine that is returned to the Dead Sea is often supersaturated in carnallite, a mineral with the composition KClMgCl₂·6H₂O that is used to produce potash. ICL is seeking innovative ways that are feasible and economical on an industrial scale to break the supersaturation.

This is an Ideation Challenge with a guaranteed award for at least one submitted solution.

Overview

Supersaturation occurs when a solute is present in a solution at a higher concentration than indicated by the solute’s solubility at the particular temperature and pressure of the solution. This is easy to accomplish in a laboratory setting by typically slowly cooling a saturated solution without disturbance.

Likewise, breaking the supersaturation by stirring the solution or adding a seed crystal is usually easy. Supersaturation also occurs in industrial process settings but breaking the supersaturation using standard techniques is not always successful for a variety of reasons.

ICL encounters such a situation near the Dead Sea during the autumn and winter months in their production plant for potash (KCl). To produce potash, salt, and other valuable minerals, ICL extracts brine from the Dead Sea and sends it through a series of evaporation ponds to concentrate and extract the materials of interest.

At the end of this series of ponds, the end brine is returned to the Dead Sea but it still may contain material of value.

Under certain circumstances that occur most often in autumn and winter, the end brine is supersaturated in carnallite, a mineral with composition KClMgCl₂·6H₂O.

ICL has investigated many techniques to break the supersaturation in order to extract more potash from the brine but each of the techniques fell short when applied on an industrial scale necessary for a production plant with an end brine flow of 180 Mm³/year (2.4 × 10¹¹ kg/year) and a final evaporation pond area of 3.5 km².

Submissions to this Challenge must be received by 11:59 PM (US Eastern Time) on 22 May 2023.

Source: InnoCentive

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