The first records of anyone trying a desalting process is actually found in the bible....? It is questionable, of course, but it reads of how Moses and the people of Israel came upon the waters of Marah which were bitter. The qoute reads "And he criedunto the Lord; and the Lord shewed him a tree, which when he had cast unto the waters, the waters were made sweet." One might consider this to be desalting....
The earliest interest in desalination was from a fear of dying of thirst outon sea. It was in the year 1791 that the United States was first involved. The first technical report was presented by Thomas Jefferson, the Secretary of State, to describe the results of a simple distillation process. The information was to be printed on the back of all the papers on board ships so that there would be a source of fresh water in an emergency.
The first conversion units were made so that steam ships could have fresh boiler water. The new devices made the steam ships possible economically. The cargo bay would otherwise be full with fresh water to run the ship. By the second World War hundreds of mobile desalination units were in use and all major vessels had them.
There was a water crisis after World War II. This stimulated the governmentto find economical ways to make potable water from saline waters. In 1952 the cost became a critical factor. The water had to be able to be used for agriculture, industry, and municipal uses. There was legislation so that moneycould be spent to find new methods with less expense on a large scale.This was a great challenge for the scientists of the time because congress was asking toincrease plant size by at least a hundred times and to cut costs 95%.
There was a new program established by the Secretary of the Interior, the Office of Saline Water (OSW). There was an initial funding, that was quickly found insufficient, of $2 million by the Saline Water Act of 1952. The law was amended and there was more than $160 million. Since then there has been tremendous progress through research of the government and by private studies. The newest information comes out in a rate of about two reports a week, while the OSW summarizes and distributes an annual report.
