Osmosis
has been happening in nature for millions of years. When it comes to
the science of it, osmosis was first discovered in 1748 by
Jean-Antoine Nollet. It was only later on, in 1940, when researchers
began looking for ways to extract pure water from salty water.
Researchers from UCLA made the major breakthrough in 1959 and were
the first to demonstrate the process known as reverse osmosis.
The
first commercial
reverse osmosis plant in the world was constructed in Coalinga,
California with the aid of Sidney Leob and Joseph W. McCutchan. Its
pilot program took place in 1965 and captured the attention of
engineers and governments from across the globe. Soon enough, new
pilot programs kept popping up in different places. While the
Coalinga plant dealt with producing pure water from brackish water, a
plant in La Jolla dealt with extracting fresh water from the sea.
This was a much taller task as the salt content of seawater is
approximately 10 times more than that of the average brackish water.
Today,
reverse osmosis and membrane filtration are being widely used around
the world for thousands of applications and are expected to keep on
growing. Sources of natural clean water are becoming much harder to
find with each passing year, and so large reverse osmosis plants are
providing much of the clean water that is being used in several
countries and areas.
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