Desalination, like all technologies, did not develop linearly over time. There were periods of rapid growth.
The following table captures some of the milestones in the development of desalination technology:
| Time | Events | ||||||
| 5th Century BC | Wool condenser (Earliest known distillation process by Greek sailors) | ||||||
| 3rd Century BC | Aristotle describes water cycle and distillation process | Use of solar energy by Archimedes | |||||
| 2nd Century BC | Egyptian distillation processes | ||||||
| 1st Century AD | Earliest use of solar energy (for salt) | ||||||
| 15th Century AD | Solar still used by an Arab Alchemist (Mouchot, 1869) for water | ||||||
| 17th Century AD | Earliest records (Japanese sailors, distillation earthen pots/bamboo reeds) | ||||||
| 1790s | Thomas Jefferson& Jacob Isaacks: US Navy Distillation: “Report on Desalination of Seawater” | ||||||
| 1872 | Early large scale solar still by the Swedish engineer Charles Wilson | ||||||
| 1881 | First commercial Desalination plant Tigne, Sleima, Malta | ||||||
|
The age of membrane separations |
The age of thermal desalination processes MSF, MED,TVC |
||||||
| Mid 1900 | By mid 1900’s…Advances in microscopy and cell biology led to concept of the Lipid Bilayer Membranes and semi-permeable membranes; R&D was underway towards a synthetic perm-selective membrane. | Multi stage flash (MSF) distillers developed for the US Navy to overcome the scaling problems in Multiple Effect (MED) units.The concept was introduced by Worthen and Barbour of Bethlehem Steel Co. 1955 Patent for a 5 stage MSF unit with TBT of 77°C. 1954: Cleaver Brooks Co (later AquaChem)-four 5 stage MSF units each of 50000 gpd for the aircraft carrierIndependence. 1956: four units of MSF each 500000 imperial gallons per day in Kuwait | |||||
| Desalination by Cellulose Acetate (CA) films | |||||||
| 1960 | MSF unit capacity growth | MED unit capacity growth | |||||
| Period | Unit capacity MIGD | Period | Unit capacity MIGD | ||||
| 1962 | Asymmetric CA(Loeb & Sourirajan) | 1960-70 | 3 | ||||
| 1963 | First spiral-wound module (General Atomics) | ||||||
| 1967 | First hollow-fiber module (Du Pont) | ||||||
| 1970 | |||||||
| 1972 | Interfacial Composite (Cadotte) | 1971-80 | 5 | ||||
| 1975 | First commercial Thin Film Composite (TFC) Polyamide; Water factory (OCWD) | 1979-82 | 5.9 (Al Khobar II KSA) | ||||
| 1978 | First fully aromatic TFC (FT30, Cadotte) | The age of large scale units | |||||
| 1980 | 1981-90 | 7.5 | |||||
| 1986 | Nanofiltration widely available (Fluid systems, Nitto Denko, FilmTec) | RO unit capacity growth | |||||
| Period | Unit capacity MIGD | ||||||
| 1990 | ↑1990 | 0.2 | 1990-95 | 8 | ↑1990 | 0.3 | |
| 1998 | First large solvent RO sep. (methyl ethyl ketone from lube oil; Grace-Davison & Mobil Oil, Beaumont, TX) | 1990-95 | 0.5 | 1996 | 12.6 (Al Taweelah-B, Abu Dhabi, UAE) | 1990-95 | 1 |
| 2000 | 1995-2000 | 1.8 | 2002 | 16.7 (Shuweihat,Abu Dhabi, UAE) | 1995-2000 | 3.3 (Um Al Nar, Abu Dhabi, UAE) | |
| 2000-02 | 3.8 (Al Taweelah, Abu Dhabi, UAE) | ||||||
| New membrane process development↓ | 2000-2005 | 6 | 2008 | 17.3 (Al Taweelah-B-Extension, Abu Dhabi, UAE) | 2005-06 | 8 (Sharjah-Layyah, UAE) | |
| 2010 | 2010 | 8.5 (Fujairah, UAE) | |||||
