Experimental Investigation on Solar Air Heater-Based Humidification-Dehumidification System to Produce Clean Water

Abstract

Large seawater is available in India. Desalination is becoming a crucial method for producing fresh water. The Humidification-Dehumidification process for water desalination has a number of benefits, including decentralized application, easy installation, low operation costs, flexibility in capacity, and simplicity. With the use of solar air heater, the experimental setup of HDH system was run during the sun shine hours. With Solar air heater the water evaporation rate increases by 2.67 kg/day. Water evaporation rate increases as increases relative humidity of air coming out from humidifying chamber. Efficiency of solar air heater increases with increases in flow rate of air. Heat gain by air depends on mass flow rate of air, it increases by decreases mass flow rate of air and reduce by increasing mass flow rate of air and also heat gain by air depends upon the ambient temperature, as the ambient temperature increases heat gain will decreases which will further decreases the solar air heater efficiency. The experiments were conducted by varying mass flow rate of air and also without solar radiation.