historic background of desalination and renewable energies

Solar Energy 75 (2003) 357–366

www.elsevier.com/locate/solener

Historic background of desalination and renewable energies

E. Delyannis *

Solar and Other Energy Systems Laboratory, National Center for Scientific Research (NCSR), Demokritos 513-10,

Aghia Paraskevi (Athens), Greece

Received 6 June 2003; accepted 7 August 2003

Abstract

It is interesting to travel through the centuries re-discovering inventions that brilliant pioneers achieved though they

lacked technological means. An historical overview may help to understand or even re-discover useful ideas that, with

today’s technology, can find applications. In this paper we will try to traverse historical paths by highlighting the most

important ideas and features developed from antiquity until today on desalination of sea and brackish water as well as

of renewable energy utilization with special reference to the use of solar energy for desalination.

� 2003 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction

It is interesting to travel the paths of history and find

out that most modern applications have been, at least

theoretically, expressed by very bright pioneer scientists

and/or philosophers who analyzed physical phenomena

but did not possess the technology to develop practical

applications.

In searching bibliographic references or historic

documents one admires the efforts that scientists or en-

gineers have made in the past. You may wonder why it is

necessary to look back into the past? As engineers and

scientists of the machine and computer era, we look

toward future technological and economic develop-

ments. We promote technology for generations to come

for the benefit of humanity, exactly the same way pio-

neers did in the past. At least if nothing else history will

teach us humility and humanism. We must not forget

what the wise man of China, Confucius (551–479 BC)

once said: ‘‘Study the past in order to predict the future’’.

Think about a millennium later or even 500 years

later, in 2500 AD. How primitive and na€ııve the scientistsof that Era will find the tremendous scientific efforts of

today. But also remember that it is because of the

* Tel.: +30-210-65-03-815.

E-mail address: [email protected] (E. Delyannis).

0038-092X/$ - see front matter � 2003 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.solener.2003.08.002

pioneers’ and founders of science and technology’s hard

work, that we now practice the sophisticated techno-

logies of today. History is our link to tomorrow’s

achievements.

Mankind recognized the potential of renewable en-

ergies from the dawn of humanity as useful or destruc-

tive forces. The sun was especially esteemed by the

Egyptians, Greeks, and Incas. Later on the ancient

Greek philosophers established that these natural forces

could be tamed. Early antiquity was depending for en-

ergy supply mainly on the sun and additionally on wood

products (let us say from biomass). Wind energy was

used mainly as kinetic energy for sailing ships and for

windmills. Today’s conventional energy sources, such as

fossil fuels and gas, were totally unknown.

2. Water and energy

Water and energy are two inseparable items that

govern our lives and promote civilization. Looking to

the history of mankind, one finds that water and civili-

zation were also two inseparable entities. It is not a

coincidence that all great civilizations were developed

and flourished near large bodies of water. Rivers, seas,

oases, and oceans have attracted mankind to their coasts

because water is the source of life. Examples abound

illustrating the importance of water in the sustainability

of life and the development of civilization. But the most

mail to: [email protected]

358 E. Delyannis / Solar Energy 75 (2003) 357–366

important example of this influence and birth of civili-

zation is Egypt. The river Nile provided irrigation and

soil, which was never exhausted, carrying a lot of mud

every year. Egyptian engineers were able to master the

river water and Egypt, as an agricultural nation, became

the main wheat exporting country in the whole Medi-

terranean Basin.

Due to the richness of the river, astronomy and

mathematics, authority and discipline, law and justice,

currency and police were created at a time when no

other human society held this knowledge. On the other

hand, energy is as important as water for the develop-

ment of good standards of life because it is the force that

puts in operation all human activities. Water is it self a

power generating force. The first confirmed attempts to

harness waterpower occurred in the centuries before

Christ. The energy gained was mainly used to grind

grain (Major, 1990).

Fig. 1. A mediaeval time distillation laboratory for the pro-

duction of herbal extracts, wine and oil perfumes.

3. The desalination concept from pre-historic times to

middle ages

The first written description of desalination is traced

to the Old Testament (Vetus, M.Dc. XXVIII), in Exo-

dus (about 1500 BC)

22 So Moyses brought the sons of Israel from the Red

Sea and they went to the desert of Sour. And they

marched three days in the wildness and they found

no water to drink. And then they arrived to Merra

and they could not drink from the

23 water of Merra, because they were bitter, therefore

he

24 gave to the place the name Bitterness. And the peo-

ple murmured against Moyses. Saying: What shall

we drink?

25 and Moyses cried onto the Lord. And the Lord

showed him a wood and he put it into the water

and the water became sweet.

It is conceivable that the ‘‘wood’’ mentioned above

had ion-exchange properties.

The Greeks were the first to express philosophical

ideas about the nature of water and energy. Thales of

Militus (640–546 BC), the first of the seven wise men of

antiquity wrote about water (Delyannis, 1960; Berthelot,

1888a) it is fertile and molded [C�oomilom caq ersı́mjaı e�ttpkarsom]. The same philosopher said for seawater:

The immense sea that surrounds the earth is primary

mother of all life. Later on Embedokles (495–435 BC)

developed the theory of the elements (Delyannis, 1960),

describing that the world consists of four primary ele-

ments: Fire, Air, Water and Earth, which under our

contemporary knowledge may be translated to: Energy,

Atmosphere, Water and Soil, the four basic constituents

that affect the quality of our lives (Delyannis and Be-

lessiotis, 2000).

Of all philosophers of antiquity it is the well-known

sage and scientist, Aristotle (384–322), who described in

a surprisingly correct way the origin and properties of

natural, brackish and seawater. He writes for the water

cycle in nature (Aristotle, 1956, 1962):

Now the sun moving, as it does, sets up processes

of change and becoming and decay, and by its

agency the finest and sweetest water is every day

carried out and is dissolved into vapor and rises

to the upper regions, where it is condensed again

by the cold and so returns to the earth. This, as

we have said before, is the regular cycle of nature.

Even today no better explanation is given for the

water cycle in nature. Really, the water cycle is a huge

solar energy open distillation plant in a perpetual op-

erational cycle. For the seawater he writes (Aristotle,

1956, 1962):

Salt water when it turns into vapor becomes sweet,

and the vapor does not form salt water when it

condenses again. This is known by experiment.

Until medieval times no important ideas or applica-

tions of desalination by solar energy existed, but during

this period, solar energy was used to fire alembics in

order to concentrate dilute alcoholic solutions or herbal

extracts for medical applications, and also to produce

wine and various perfume oils (Fig. 1). The stills or

alembics were discovered in Alexandria, Egypt, during

the Hellenistic period (Bittel, 1959). Cleopatra the Wise

(Berthelot, 1888b), a Greek alchemist, developed many

distillers as these in Fig. 2 (Bittel, 1959). The head of the

pot was called ambix, which in Greek means the ‘‘head

Fig. 2. The Cleopatra’s alembics: dı́bijo1 & sqıbıjo1 (two and three ambix).

E. Delyannis / Solar Energy 75 (2003) 357–366 359

of the still’’, but this word was applied very often to the

whole still. The Arabs who overtook science and espe-

cially alchemy about the 7th century, named the distill-

ers Al-Ambiq, from which came the name alembic.

Mouchot (1869, 1879) the well-known French scien-

tist who experimented with solar energy, mentions in

one of his numerous books that during medieval times

Arab alchemists carried out experiments with polished

Damascus concave mirrors to focus solar radiation onto

glass vessels containing salt water in order to produce

fresh water. He also reports on his own experimental

work with solar energy to distill alcohol and about a

metal mirror having a linear focus with a boiler located

along the focal line (Mouchot, 1869, 1879).

Fig. 3. The Della Porta solar distillation apparatus, as pre-

sented in his book ‘‘Magiae Naturalis’’ (Nebbia and Nebbia-

Menozzi, 1966).
4. The development of solar desalination during the
Renaissance period

Later on during the Renaissance, Giovani Batista

Della Porta (1535–1615), one of the most important

scientists of his time wrote many books which were

translated into French, Italian and German. In the first

edition of his book Magiae Naturalis which appeared in

1558 he mentions three desalination systems (Della

Porta, 1558, 1570, 1631, 1612). In 1589 he issued the

second edition comprising 20 volumes. In the volume on

distillation he mentions seven methods of desalination,

but the most important reference is in the 19th volume

where he describes a solar distillation apparatus that

converted brackish water into fresh water (Della Porta,

1589, 1957, 1958). Fig. 3 shows the Della Porta solar

distillation unit (Nebbia and Nebbia-Menozzi, 1966).

He also describes, in the second chapter of volume 20, a

method to obtain fresh water from the air (nowadays

called the humidification–dehumidification method).

From the time of Della Porta until the 19th century,

there are no important applications of solar distillation.

In 1870 the first American patent on solar distillation

was granted to Wheeler and Evans. The patent, based

on experimental work, was very detailed. Almost ev-

erything known to us about the basic operation of the

solar stills and the corresponding corrosion problems

was described in that patent. The report started as fol-

lows:

This invention is based upon well known physical

laws.

The inventors described the greenhouse effect, ana-

lyzed in detail the cover condensation and re-evapora-

tion, discussed the dark surface absorption and the

possibility of corrosion problems. High operating tem-

peratures were claimed as well as means of rotating the

still in order to follow the solar incident radiation

(Wheeler and Evans, 1870).

Two years later, in 1872, an engineer from Sweden,

Carlos Wilson, designed and built the first large solar

Fig. 4. The world-wide first solar distillation plant at Las

Salinas, Chile (Telkes, 1956b).


distillation plant, in Las Salinas, Chile (Harding, 1883).

The plant was constructed to provide fresh water to the

workers and their families of a saltpeter mine and a

nearby silver mine. They used the saltpeter mine efflu-

ents, of very high salinity (140 g/kg or 140,000 ppm), as

feed water to the stills. The plant was constructed of

wood and timber framework covered with one sheet of

glass. It consisted of 64 bays having a total surface area

of 4450 m2 and a total land surface area of 7896 m2. It

produced 22.70 m3 of fresh water per day (Fig. 4). The

plant was in operation for about 40 years until the mines

were exhausted.

Fig. 5. The OSW solar distillation Station at Deytone Beach,

Florida (photograph E. Delyannis).

5. The achievements of the 20th century

Until the Second World War there existed only a few

references about new solar distillation plants such as

Abbot’s work in developing a solar distillation device,

similar to that of Mouchot (Abbot, 1930, 1938). At the

same time some research on solar distillation was un-

dertaken in the USSR (Trofimov, 1930; Tekutchev,

1938).

Meanwhile during the years 1930–1940 the dryness in

California awakened a new interest in desalination of

saline water in general. Some projects were started, but

the depressed economy at that time did not permit any

research or applications.

Interest grew stronger during World War II, when

hundreds of soldiers of the allied troops suffered from

lack of drinking water while stationed in North Africa,

the Pacific Ocean Islands and other isolated places.

A team at MIT led by Maria Telkes had already

begun experiments with solar stills (Telkes, 1943). At the

same time the US National Research Defense Com-

mittee (NRDC), sponsored solar research to develop

solar desalters for military needs at sea. Many patents

were granted (Delano, 1946a,b; Delano and Meisner,

1946), as practical individual small plastic solar distil-

lation apparatuses were developed to be adaptable to

lifeboats or rafts. These were used extensively by the US

Navy during the War (Telkes, 1945). They were designed

to float on seawater when inflated, saving many lives.

Telkes continued to investigate various configurations of

solar stills, glass covered and multiple-effect solar stills

(Telkes, 1951, 1953, 1956a).

The explosion of urban population and the tremen-

dous expansion of industry after World War II, brought

again the problem of good quality water into focus. In

the US, the growing water problem of the 1940s initiated

a number of legislative bills by the US Congress to ad-

dress water issues. President Truman took note of the

problem in 1950. In his budget message he noticed

(OSW, 1961):

Experience in recent years has been that it is not

possible to meet the shortage of water, which is a

threat in some areas, through our extensive water

resources programs. I recommended, therefore,

that the Congress enact legislation authorizing

the initiation of research to find the means for

transferring salt water into fresh water in large vol-

umes at economical costs.

In July 1952 the US Secretary of the Interior estab-

lished the Office of Saline Water (OSW) the task of

which was to finance basic research on desalination.

OSW promoted desalination application through re-

search, by the publication of R&D progress reports and

the construction of five demonstration plants. Among

them was a solar distillation in Daytona Beach, Florida

(Fig. 5) where many types and configurations of solar

stills (American and foreign), were tested (Talbert et al.,

1970). Loef, as a consultant to the OSW, experimented

with stills, such as basin-type stills, solar evaporation

with external condensers and multiple-effect stills, at the


OSW experimental station in Daytona Beach (1954,

1955). Loef also developed a glass-covered basin-type

solar still design with interconnected bays (Loef, 1957,

1958; US Bureau of Reclamation, 1957).

In the following years many small capacity solar

distillation plants were erected in some Caribbean Is-

lands by McGill University in Canada. Howe was an-

other pioneer in solar stills. He and his collaborators, at

the Sea Water Conversion Laboratory of the University

of California, Berkeley, carried out many studies on

solar distillation (UC/Davis, 1970–1985). Experimental

work on solar distillation was also performed at the

National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi, India and in

the Central Salt and Marine Chemical Research Insti-

tute, Bhavnagar, India. The Battelle Memorial Institute,

at Columbus, OH, reported on all solar stills and solar

distillation plants experimented or/and built up to 1970

(Talbert et al., 1970).

In Australia, the Commonwealth Scientific and In-

dustrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Melbourne,

carried out a number of studies on solar distillation. In

1963, they developed a prototype bay type still, glass

covered and lined with black polyethylene sheet

(CSIRO, 1960). Using this prototype still, they con-

structed solar distillation plants in the Australian desert

providing fresh water from saline well water for people

and livestock. The larger of these solar distillation plants

(Fig. 6) was installed in Coober Pedy (Wilson, 1957;

Cooper, 1969).

At the same time Baum in USSR was experimenting

with solar stills (Baum, 1960, 1961, 1966). Other orga-

nizations in the USSR which carried out experiments

with solar stills include the Solar Energy Laboratory at

Krzhizhanovsky Power Institute in Moscow, the Physics

and Engineering Institute and Academy of Sciences in

the Turkmenian SSR (Baum and Bairamov, 1964). In

Ashkabad, Turkmenia a solar distillation plant was built

to provide fresh water to the caracule sheep. The plant

Fig. 6. The Coober-Pedy (Australia) distillation plant (photo-

graph A. Delyannis).

was fed with salt water from wells. An experimental PV

generator provided 300–400 W for pumping the brack-

ish water to the stills.

On March 17, 1954, the ‘‘Association for Applied

Solar Energy’’ (AASE) was formed in Phoenix, Arizona.

It was later renamed the ‘‘International Solar Energy

Society’’ (ISES) to accelerate the utilization of the sun’s

energy. About a year later AASE in collaboration with

the University of Arizona and the Stanford Research

Institute, organized the First World Symposium on

‘‘Applied Solar Energy’’ which took place in November

1955. In one of the papers Telkes described the Las

Salinas solar distillation plant, and reported that it was

in operation for about 36 continuous years (Telkes,

1956b). Two articles were dedicated to the history and

evolution of solar energy machines (Jordan, Robinson,

1956).

In January 1957 the AASE printed the first issue of

The Journal of Solar Energy Science and Engineering, the

ancestor of the Solar Energy Journal. The first article

was written by Abbot, on ‘‘Weather and Solar Varia-

tions’’.

Between the years 1965 and 1970 solar distillation

plants were constructed on four Greek Islands to pro-

vide small communities with fresh water (Delyannis,

1967, 1968, 1983, 1987). The design of the stills was done

at the Technical University of Athens (Fig. 7). They used

seawater as feed and were covered with single glass.

Their capacity ranged from 2044 to 8640 m3/day. The

installation in the island of Patmos was the largest solar

distillation plant ever built. These solar stills were of the

asymmetric glass covered greenhouse-type with alumi-

num frames. In three more Greek Islands the Church

World Service of New York erected three solar distil-

lation plants These plastic covered stills (tedlar) with

capacities of 2886, 388 and 377 m3/day met the summer

fresh water needs of the Young Men’s Christian Asso-

ciation (YMCA). Edlin designed the stills which were

tested by the OSW in Daytona Beach, FL. The first

plant was an inflated, plastic cover design, while the

Fig. 7. The island of Symi (Greece) solar distillation plant.


other two were plastic V-shape configuration (Eckstrom,

1965).

Solar distillation plants were also constructed on the

Island of Porto Santo, Madeira, Portugal and in India

for which no detailed information exists. Today most of

these plants are not operational. A lot of research is

being carried out on solar stills but no large capacity

solar distillation plants have been constructed in recent

years. On the other hand, considerable activity has

started in the area of renewable energy coupled to small

capacity conventional desalination units to provide

small communities with fresh water, especially during

the summer. These are mainly connected to reverse os-

mosis desalination plants of capacities over 1.0 m3 d�1.

The majority of these pilot-size plants are for experi-

mental purposes.

Fig. 9. King Akhnaton adoring the Sun. 18th Dynasty. Cairo,

the Egyptian Museum.

6. Renewable energy as energy source for desalination

Renewable energy is the alternative solution to the

decreasing reserves of fossil fuels. Total worldwide re-

newable energy desalination installations amount to ca-

pacities less than 1% of that of conventional fossil fuel

desalination plants. This is due mainly to the high capital

and maintenance costs required by renewable energy,

making these desalination plants noncompetitive with

conventional fuel desalination plants. Fig. 8 shows the

estimation byWorld Energy Council (WEC, 1994) of the

increasing general general use of renewable energies.

6.1. The utilization of the sun’s energy

Solar energy is the oldest energy source ever used.

The Sun was adored, in many ancient civilizations, as

powerful God, as it is shown in Fig. 9, where Pharaoh

Akhnaton adores the Sun. The first known practical

applications were in drying for preserving food. The

oldest installation for drying of food with solar radiation

was found in South France and is dated at 8000 BC.

The oldest large-scale application known to us is the

burning of the Roman fleet in the bay of Syracuse, by

Fig. 8. The World Energy Council (WEC) estimation of re-

newable energies utilization increase up to year 2020.

Archimedes, the Greek mathematician and philosopher

(287–212 BC), who used flat mirrors to focus the sun’s

rays to a common point on the ship. Scientists discussed

this event for centuries. From 100 BC to 1100 AD au-

thors made reference to this event although later it was

criticized as a myth because no technology existed at

that time to manufacture mirrors (Delyannis, 1967).

Nevertheless Archimedes is the author of a book called

Mirrors, which is only known from references about its

existence. Proclus repeated Archimedes’ experiment

during the Byzantine period. He burned the war fleet of

enemies besieging Byzance in Constantinople, (Delyan-

nis, 1967).

In his book, Optics Vitelio, a Polish mathematician,

describes the burning of the Roman fleet with detail

(Delyannis, 1967; Delyannis and Belessiotis, 1996, 2000;

Delyannis and El-Nashar, 1998):

The burning glass of Archimedes composed of 24

mirrors, which conveyed the rays of the sun into a

common focus and produced an extra degree of heat.

Although this was a military experiment, it proved

that solar radiation could be a powerful source of en-

Fig. 11. The A. Muchot solar concentrator at the International

Paris Exhibition in 1878.


ergy. Many centuries later, scientists again started to

experiment with solar radiation trying to convert it into

a usable form for direct utilization. In the beginning this

happened in Europe when machines were starting to

replace horses just before the industrial revolution.

Solar energy utilization resumed during the 18th cen-

tury first by the French naturalist Boufon (1747–1748),

who experimented with various devices called by him

‘‘hot mirrors burning at long distance.’’ One of the first

large-scale applications was the solar furnace built by the

well-known French chemist Lavoisier (1772, 1782), who

at about 1774 constructed powerful lenses to concentrate

solar radiation (Fig. 10). These two scientists greatly

promoted research and application of solar energy.

Between 1866 and 1878 the French engineer Mou-

chot, constructed and tested various concentrated col-

lectors in Europe and North Africa. Fig. 11 shows

Mouchot’s concentrating collector presented at the 1878

International Exhibition in Paris. The energy gained was

used to produce steam to drive a printing machine,

which was printing (in French) a Solar Energy Journal

(Mouchot, 1878, 1880).

The efforts were continued in the USA where John

Ericsson, an American engineer developed the first

steam engine driven directly by solar energy. Ericsson

built eight systems having parabolic troughs by using

either water or air as the working medium (Jordan and

Ibele, 1956).

In the beginning of the 20th century, the dramatic

increase in energy consumption by industry, ignited in-

terest in the possibility of harvesting solar energy for

extended practical applications. In 1901, Eneas con-

structed a large solar concentrator in Pasadena, CA. It

was a truncated cone having a solar collection area of

642 sq. ft. (59.64 m2) and used water as the working

medium. Two more were built in Mesa, CA and one in

Wilcox, AZ (Jordan and Ibele, 1956).

Fig. 10. The Lavoisier’s solar furnace with t

In 1901 a team of engineers constructed a truncated

cone concentrator similar to that of Eneas. It was also

installed in Pasadena, California and was known as the

‘‘Ostrich Farm Pasadena Sun Power Plant’’ (Jordan and

Ibele, 1956). The inner side of the concentrator was lined

with 1788 plane mirrors operated clockwise to re-adjust

the focus every 20 min. It produced steam to run a 10

HP (7457 kW) steam engine.

In 1910 Harrington erected the first solar storage

device of 19 m3 capacity. A solar driven pump was used

to pump the water to a storage tank, which was 6.0 m

higher. Schuman, an American engineer from Philadel-

phia, Pennsylvania, built the first flat concentrator. Later

in 1913, Harrington collaborated with Boys to install the

biggest solar power plant ever built in Meadi, (south of

Cairo), Egypt. The plant provided irrigation water from

the river Nile (Jordan and Ibele, 1956). The next large

solar plant would not be built for another 63 years.

he hot mirrors burning at long distance.

Fig. 13. The Abu-Dhabi solar MED plant, producing about

120 m3d�1 fresh water. It was erected in 1984 and is still in

operation.


One of the first large scale experimental solar power

plants was constructed by Francia, of the University of

Genoa, Italy (Delyannis, personal report). The plant was

installed at San Illario-Nervi, near Genoa. The concen-

trators were cyclic faced mirrors reflecting solar radiation

onto a central boiler, to produce steam. The plant con-

sisted of 270 heliostats of 1.0 m diameter each and the

output was 50 kW. Based exactly on the same design as

that of Francia, a pilot solar plant was installed in Sep-

tember 1977 at the engineering experiment station of the

Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, Georgia

USA. This station was an advanced components test

facility for the US Department of Energy (US DOE).

The collector consisted of an octagonally shaped mirror

field containing 550 surface glass mirrors, each of 43.7 in.

(111 cm) diameter. The field focused the sunlight into a

focal zone of 70.3 ft. (21.4 m) over the center of the field.

The total power into the focal zone was approximately

400 kW. The focal temperature was 1900 �C (3450 �F)and the boiler had a maximum output of 130 kW. Fig. 12

shows the Georgia Institute of Technology experimental

plant as it existed in 1978, when the Silver Jubilee of ISES

took place in Atlanta.

Today there exist many large solar plants with output

in the range of MW, instead of kW, for producing

electricity or process heat. The first commercial solar

plant was installed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA,

in 1979, 63 years after the Meadi installation by Boy and

Schumann. It consisted of 220 heliostats and had an

output of 5 MW. The second was erected at Barstow,

California, USA, with a total thermal output of 35 MW.

Most of the solar plants produce electricity and/or

process water for industrial use and they provide super-

heated steam of 673 K. Thus, they can provide electricity

and/or steam to drive small capacity conventional desa-

lination plants driven by thermal or electrical energy.

Fig. 13 shows a solar driven desalination multi-effect

plant operated by solar thermal energy collected by

vacuum tube collectors. The plant was installed in Abu-

Dhabi, by the Abu-Dhabi Water and Electricity De-

partment, United Arab Emerits (El-Nashar, 1985, 1995).

Fig. 12. The Georgia Tech. Experimental solar power plant.

Some solar desalination plants coupled with con-

ventional desalination plants were installed in various

locations in the Middle East. The majority of these

plants are experimental or demonstration scale. This is

due mainly to the high capital and maintenance costs of

these plants.

6.2. The utilization of wind energy

After solar energy, wind energy is the most widely

used energy source for small capacity desalination

plants, mainly of the reverse osmosis type. There exist

many wind farms producing electricity and some are

connected to desalination plants.

Wind energy is, in fact, an indirect activity of the sun.

Its use as energy goes as far back as 4000 years, during

the dawn of historical times. It was adored, like the sun,

as God. For the Greeks, wind was the god Aeolos, the

‘‘flying man’’. After this god’s name, wind energy is

sometimes referred to as Aeolian energy. He was ac-

companied by eight god-winds which defined the various

wind directions. The Athenians dedicated a clock tower

to them, which still exists today in Athens. In Homer’’s

Odyssey (book X 22–48), it states:

Then to the Aeolian isle we came, where dwelt Ae-

olos, the son of Hippotas, dear to the Gods . . . forthe Gods . . . for the son of Cronos had made him

keeper of the winds.

In the beginning, about 4000 ago, wind energy was

used for the propulsion of sailing ships. In antiquity this

was the only energy to drive ships sailing in the Medi-

terranean Basin and other seas, and even today it is used

for sailing small leisure boats. At about the same period

windmills appeared which were used mainly to grind

various crops.


It is believed that the genesis of windmills, though

not proved, originated from the prayer mills of Tibet.

The first, very primitive windmills have been found at

Neh, eastern Iran and on the Afghanistan borders

(Major, 1990). Many windmills have been found in

Persia, India, Sumatra and Bactria. It is believed in

general that many of the windmills were constructed by

the Greeks, who immigrated to Asia with the troops of

Alexander the Great (Heron, 80 AD). The earliest

written document known to us about windmills is in a

Hindu book of about 400 BC, called Arthasastra of

Kantilys (Soerensen, 1995), where it suggested the use of

windmills to pump water. In Western Europe windmills

came later, during the 12th century, with the first written

reference in the 1040–1180 AD time frame (Merriam,

1980).

The famous Swiss mathematician, Euleur, developed

the wind wheel theory and related equations, which are,

even today, the most important principles for turbo-

generators. The ancestor of today’s vertical axis wind

turbines were developed by Darious (1931), but it took

about 50 years to be commercialized in the 1970s.

Denmark first installed wind turbines during World War

II to increase the electrical capacity of their grid. They

installed 200 kW Gedser mill turbines, which were in

operation until the 1960s (Dodge and Thresler, 1989).

They had a capacity of 300–500 kW. These types of wind

turbines were replaced by the new generation of ‘‘aero

generators’’ which are more flexible and cheaper than

the older ones. Today’s modern wind generators range

from 500 kW up to 1.0 MW.

Wind farms or individual wind generators are used

today to produce electricity for reverse osmosis desali-

nation units in order to provide fresh water to small

communities in isolated and remote locations having

sufficient wind energy sites.

7. Conclusions

Historic developments help new generations to un-

derstand the continuity of technological achievements

and to adopt and apply old ideas to new existing meth-

odologies. History is not an event that goes back only to

very ancient times. Taking into consideration the very

rapid rate of new developments, what is for our genera-

tion a new sophisticated development and application, is

for a new generation already an historical event.

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