Combined two stage desalination and cooling plant

•Improved yield in desalination•Two outputs from a single source of energy•High overall energy utilization factor•Use of solar thermal energy in place of conventional sources•Modified version of humidification and dehumidification (HDH) cycle

Two or more than two outputs from a single source result an overall high energy utilization factor (EUF) compared to the single output system. In this work, two stage humidification and dehumidification (HDH) desalination system has been extended with cooling system integration. Solar flat plate collector and concentrating collector are selected respectively for HDH desalination and single effect vapor absorption refrigeration (VAR) plant. The cooling after desalination increases the yield of distillation compared to without its integration. The sequence of operations in the combined plant is first stage air preheatinghumidification–dehumidification, second stage air preheating–humidification–dehumidification and final cooling of air with chilled water. The work is aimed on thermodynamic study for maximization of EUF for cycle and plant. The role of humidifier efficiency, its effectiveness, hot water temperature and chilled water temperature (by varying VAR evaporator temperature) has been studied on integrated performance. The resulted distilled water is 670 LPH with 75 kW cooling at unit volume of air (1 m3/s). The cycle EUF and plant EUF are 0.58 and 0.33 respectively.