Two inventions important to Israel’s economy–one to increase vastly the yield of oil from bitumine stones in the Dead Sea area, the other to reduce greatly the cost of extracting precious magnesium from Dead Sea minerals-were announced here today. They have been developed by Alexander Zarchin, the engineer who fled a Soviet forced-labor camp in 1951 and who, only a week ago, was announced as the inventor of a method for desalting water.
One of Zarchin’s latest inventions, according to the Israeli Inventors Association, will yield as high as 25 per cent oil from millions of tons of bitumine stones. The other Zarchin improvement, concerning magnesium, would reduce the price of this mineral from $2,000 a ton to about 250 Israeli pounds for the same quantity.
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