Influence of vapor absorption cooling on humidification-dehumidification (HDH) desalination

Abstract

The desalination yield in humidification-dehumidification (HDH) process is increased by proposing cooling plant integration with two stage operation. The current work is targeted on the investigation of vapor absorption refrigeration (VAR) parameters on overall energy utilization factor (EUF). The dephlegmator heat is recovered internally in VAR instead of rejecting to environment. This work can be used to control the operational conditions of VAR to enhance the desalination and cooling together. The studied process parameters in VAR are strong solution concentration, separator or generator temperature, dephlegmator effectiveness, circulating water inlet temperature and evaporator temperature. Out of these five variables, lower limit of separator temperature, upper limit of dephlegmator effectiveness and lower limit of circulating water temperature are fixed in the specified range to attain the optimum strong solution concentration and optimum evaporator temperature. At the specified boundaries of three variables, the optimized strong solution concentration and evaporator temperature are 0.47 and 10 °C respectively. At this condition, the maximized cycle EUF is 0.358.

Keywords

• Cooling
• Desalination
• Humidification
• Vapor absorption