Performance evaluation of a solar-driven adsorption desalination-cooling system

Problems of energy and fresh water shortage become hard challenges facing survival of the human beings. Egypt especially is facing increasing of water supply challenges due to population growth. In this study, a new proposed solar adsorption desalination-cooling (ADC) system is designed, built, and tested under Egypt's climate conditions. A commercially available silica gel of about 13.5 kg is used. The Adsorption characteristics of the selected silica gel-water pair are evaluated firstly to design the proposed system. In addition, a theoretical dynamic model is developed to predict the system performance. A good agreement is found between the theoretical and experimental results under different Egypt climate conditions. The results show that, the average specific cooling power is 112 W/kg and average specific daily water production is 4 m³ per ton silica gel with a COP of 0.45. Based on the obtained results, ADC system driven by solar energy proven to be an adequate solution to offer proper alternative to the traditional desalination systems and have promising future in Egypt's climate. However, studies about improving the performance of such system and new designs are still needed.