Numerical Study of Solar Still Integrated with Humidification-Dehumidification System

Abstract

A novel solar still integrated with Humidification-Dehumidification (H-DH) distillation system is presented as one of the non-conventional solar desalinating processes. The main objective is to enhance water production of the integrated system by utilizing the waste latent heat of condensation of the still product. Rejected condensation energy is used in the H-DH system for additional water production. This will lead to product water cost reduction while maintaining the simplicity of the system operation and maintenance. A numerical code is developed in MATLAB for the same in order to simulate the integrated system and study the effect of various environmental, design and operational parameters on the unit's productivity and efficiency. The integrated distillation system is studied under forced convection during the winter and summer seasons for the typical climate of Abu Dhabi (UAE). The results show that the effect of initial water mass in the still basin and mass flow rate of air has pronounced effect on the system productivity during both summer and winter conditions while the temperature difference of water at the dehumidifier condenser has a slight effect on the HDH productivity in the winter only. The maximum system productivity in winter is reported at a mass flow rate of 0.1kg/s as 6.8 kg/m2 day while in the summer the production increases to 8.1 kg/m2 day at the same mass flow rate. For optimum selected parameters of 0.1kg/s mass flow rate of air and 1cm height of water in the basin, the integrated system productivity was reported be as high as 8.8 kg/m2 day in the summer which is 30% higher than that reported in literature.

Date of Award	2011
Original language	American English
Supervisor	Hassan Fath (Supervisor)