Early experiments on water desalination by freezing

✍ Scribed by Giorgio Nebbia; Gabriella Nebbia Menozzi

• Book ID: 104112823
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1968
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 996 KB
• Volume: 5
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0011-9164
• DOI: 10.1016/s0011-9164(00)80191-5

✦ Synopsis

univcrsit+ di Bari, aori (Irdyj

In the second half of the XVlX Century the obscrsatian was reported IhAt ice formed itI sea WWX gives fresh ;\atcr after thawing, and in some instances kc has been used as a source of fresh water on shipboard. At the end of rhc 1700% the Italian scientist Anton Maria Lorgna described a method to purify sea \ater and impwe \aters by frwzing. melting of the ice and successive freezing of she wxtcr so obtained from the kc,

In past centuries (II 2) the main process used for ob,tainirtg fresh water from the sea, both on shipboard and on land has been distiflatian, hut starting with the I6Ws, some experiments were made on desalination by freezing. The Danish physician Thomas BarthoIinus (1616-f680f was apparently the first to report (2, 4) that water obtained by melting ice formed in sea water was fresh. Almost at the same time Rolxrt Boyle (1627-1691) reported (S, GT) the same observation foreseeing the phenomenon as a source of fresh water, and the Jesuit Athanasios Kircher (I602-1680) discussed the reason why ice formed in the sea is fresh fi+).

A few years later. Samuel Reyher (Ie35-i-1714) described an experiment in which he analyzed the salt content of the ice formed on the sea in the harbour of Kicl and found that upon melting, it gave fresh water (8). in 1763 the novefist and travcIIer Tobias George Smollett (1721-1771) recommended freezing of salt water to purify it