Performance of a 3-stage regenerative desalination system based on humidification-dehumidification process

This paper presents a 3-stage regenerative desalination system based on humidification-dehumidification process. The sketch of 3-stage regenerative desalination process is given. It realizes the cascade utilization of thermo energy, which decreases the temperature range of the circulation. It improves the performance of the system enormously. A mathematical model based on mass and energy balances in each component of the system is developed. The numerical model is used to investigate the performance of this kind of installation exposed to a variation of the control parameters. The fresh water production can reach 91.1 kg/h and the gained output ratio can reach 5.13 when the temperature of saline water outlet from the solar collector reaches 85°C.