Design and experimental analysis of solar-powered water desalination system using humidification?dehumidification

Abstract

Desalination with solar-powered air heating and packed bed humidification is designed and fabricated using locally available materials. The system with fined type dehumidifier is designed using the LMTD method. There are different solar desalination techniques such as solar still, solar air humidification dehumidification and solar water flash evaporation. Among these desalination techniques, solar air humidification dehumidification was already successfully used in very large-scale desalination but, not effectively tried for small-scale desalination. Desalination system with HDH was designed and fabricated during this research project for small-scale output. There are three main components of the system: Solar air heater, humidifier and dehumidifier. The packed bed was used in the design of humidifier for increasing the surface contact area of air with water. Psychrometric properties are recorded with the use of sensors DHT11 and ESP8266 micro-controller Wi-Fi board. The water temperatures are recorded with PT100 sensors and 8 channels data logger.