Robert Silver
Robert Simpson Silver CBE,
MA,
Ph.D,
D.Sc.,
D.Tech,
F.I.Mech.E,
F.Inst.P,
FRSE (1913–1997) was a Scottish physicist and mechanical engineer, awarded the
Unesco Prize for Science in 1968 for his discovery of a process for the
demineralisation of
sea water. Prior to his work there had been no commercially viable desalination process that involved continuous flow; plants had to be stopped and emptied of accumulated salt from time to time, such as when a passenger liner using desalination was in port. Silver performed a thermodynamic analysis (now known as "Second Law Analysis") showing that
reverse osmosis and "multi-stage flash" were the optimal processes for purification of water. As reverse osmosis technology was less advanced in the mid-20th century he designed multi-stage flash equipment, of which the first operational large-scale installation was in
Kuwait.
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