Professional assessments are used to judge the relative merits of any planned evaporation pond prior to installation, especially brine ponds that typically focus on promoting fast evaporation to enable the mining of desirable salts and minerals as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. However, any evaporative technique is climate dependent, and can vary with seasons, rainfall, relative humidity, and even the composition of the wastewater that is being evaporated. For example, the evaporation cycle at the Utah potash mining facility spans approximately 300 days, so sometimes patience is the key.
In other instances, where an evaporation pond is intended primarily for storage of wastewater and the rate of evaporation is not critical, little attention is paid to the actual time frame or efficacy of the evaporation rate. There are some actions that can be employed to speed the rate; heating the water, adding salt and using baffles to direct the wind can be minimally effective in some cases. Professional design is perhaps the most effective way to ensure that system design meets established goals for operation of an evaporation pond.
