Experimental and analytical study on productivity augmentation of a novel solar humidification-dehumidification (HDH) system

The aim of this study is to investigate analytically and experimentally the effect of using an induced atmospheric air, water heaters, external reflector and weather condition on the performance augmentation of humidification-dehumidification (HDH) system. This novel HDH system is a modified solar still with air blower and condenser used at humidification chamber inlet and outlet respectively and glass cover is positioned horizontally. Experiments were carried out in April 2014 under the climatological conditions of Madinah (latitude: 24° 33′ N, longitude: 39° 36′ 0″ E), Saudi Arabia. Performance of the HDH system is examined with and without water heaters and reflector. The experimental results showed that the daily productivity of the considered HDH system has improved when using both water heaters and reflector. A remarkable increase in productivity by about 210, 312 and 366% on three test days, namely, April 01, April 15 and April 30 respectively is obtained for still configured with two water heaters at 500 W each and a reflector tilted at 20° compared to that without heaters and reflector. The estimated cost of fresh water produced through the considered HDH system is 0.035 USD/L and the peak efficiency is 0.77.