Experimental Investigation on an Enhanced Humidification-Dehumidification Solar Desalination System with Weakly Compressed Air and Internal Heat Recovery
Abstract
Humidification-dehumidification (HDH) process has proven to be a feasible method to obtain fresh water. On-going research on HDH desalination system has been carried out to improve the system performance and maintain steady fresh water production. However, it is difficult to guarantee the efficiency and stability of fresh water production at the same time. In this paper, an enhanced HDH desalination system with weakly compressed air and internal heat recovery is thus proposed, and the experimental setup is then designed and fabricated. Benefiting from a new-design evaporative-condenser, the latent heat released by the process air can be recycled completely, which can provide a continuous and steady heat input for the evaporation of seawater. Therefore, extra heat source and cooling seawater are no need any more during steady running. The experimental results show that both seawater temperature and pressure difference play critical role to the system performance. Meanwhile, the proposed system also shows remarkable excellence in GOR.