Development of design optimized simulation tool for water desalination system

•Simulation of an HDH system driven by a compound concentrator is conducted.•A comparison between experimental data and simulation results shows a good agreement.•Fresh water production rate lies between 1 and 3.5 kg/h based on the season.•Optimized performance factor reaches a maximum of 0.85 in summer season.•A robust design tool for HDH desalination was developed with maximum error of 5.8%.

Up to half of the world's population faced growing water crisis at an alarming rate especially in developing countries such as African countries. Thus, with abundant salty water and solar intensity in those regions, solar powered desalination system presents an attractive solution towards availability of clean water. Humidification/dehumidification desalination system is considered as a competitive solution between many desalination systems. Its performance depends on the matching between site weather conditions and different design parameters. This fact proves the urgent needs for a robust design tool that is capable of predicting the desalination system performance at a certain location before implementation decision. The present work developed a simulation design tool based on TRNSYS and EES programs that could predict the system performance. Previously published experimental data were utilized for the validation process where a maximum error of about 5.8% achieved. The developed tool was applied on EL-ARISH region, as an example of remote areas. Results showed that an output of 1 kg/h fresh water rate requires about 15 m2 of the compound parabolic trough collector operating at average solar intensity of 1000 W/m2. An optimization technique was integrated to the developed model to improve the matching between the system operating parameters and site weather conditions.