Desalination 332 (2014) 16

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Desalination
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/desal

Experimental investigation of a two-stage solar

humidication dehumidication desalination process
M. Zamen a,b, S.M. Soufari a, S. Abbasian Vahdat a, M. Amidpour b,, M.A. Zeinali a, H. Izanloo c, H. Aghababaie d
a

Iranian Institute of Research and Development in Chemical Industries (ACECR), Karaj, Iran
Department of Mechanical Eng., K.N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Research Center for Environmental Pollutants and Department of Environmental Health Engineering, Health Faculty, Qom University of Medical Sciences, Qom, Iran
d
Qom Payame Noor University, Qom, Iran
b
c

H I G H L I G H T S

A multistage HD process was investigated to improve efciency of HD desalinator.

2-Stage process is the best choice from cost and performance point of view.
A 2-stage solar HD desalination unit constructed and tested in an arid area
Production is presented and compared during hot and cold days.
Improvement in productivity and reduction of solar collector area were obtained.

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 3 May 2013
Received in revised form 7 October 2013
Accepted 18 October 2013
Available online 9 November 2013
Keywords:
Solar desalination
Humidicationdehumidication
Two-stage process

a b s t r a c t
This paper experimentally evaluates a two-stage technique to improve the humidicationdehumidication
process in fresh water production from brackish water. According to modeling results of multi-stage process
and on the basis of construction cost estimation, using a two-stage process is the most suitable choice that can
improve important parameters such as specic energy consumption, productivity and daily production per
solar collector area and thus, investment cost. A pilot plant was designed and constructed in an arid area with
80 m2 solar collector area to evaluate the two-stage process. This unit was tested on cold and hot days. The effect
of main parameters on fresh water production of the unit is studied. Experimental results show that two-stage
HD desalination unit can increase heat recovery in condensers and hence, reduce thermal energy consumption
and investment cost of the unit. Moreover, productivity can be increased by 20% compared with the singlestage unit.
2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
With diminishing water resources, the problem of drinking water
seems to be the most important issue in the near future. It is predicted
that more than half of the world's population will suffer from water
shortage by 2025 [1]. One of the best solutions to this problem is
brackish/seawater desalination.
Air humidicationdehumidication (HD) desalination is a suitable
choice for producing fresh water when demand is decentralized.
Conventional desalination methods such as MSF (Multi-Stage Flash),
ME (Multi-Effect), VC (Vapor Compression) and RO (Reverse Osmoses)
are suitable for large and medium capacities of fresh water production.
But most remote arid areas need low capacity desalination systems.
Corresponding author at: Energy system Engineering Department, Mechanical
Engineering Faculty, K.N. Toosi University of Technology, No. 15 Pardis Street,
Mollahsadra Ave., Tehran, Iran. Tel.: +98 21 88677272; fax: +98 21 88677273.
E-mail address: amidpour@kntu.ac.ir (M. Amidpour).
0011-9164/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2013.10.018

Simplicity of the process and availability of high levels of solar energy

in most of the areas that need fresh water make this system suitable
for these areas.
Most of investigations on HD desalination process are concerned
about productivity and efciency improvement and have been done
after 1990 and several units have been built which are similar in base
but different in type of equipment.
Farid and Hamad [2] constructed an HD desalination unit in Basrah,
south of Iraq. The unit produced 12 l/daym2 of solar collector surface
which was about three times the production of a single-basin solar
still under similar solar conditions. However, the pressure drop in the
condenser and the humidier was too high, increasing the electrical
power consumption by the blower to a level that makes such a process
uneconomic.
Then, two units of different sizes were constructed and operated in
Jordan described by Farid et al. [4] and Al-hallaj et al. [3]. They found
that the effect of water ow rate on heat and mass transfer coefcient
is more signicant than air ow rate.

M. Zamen et al. / Desalination 332 (2014) 16

Ben Bacha et al. [5] presented a perfect study including modeling,

simulation, and experimental validation of a solar HD called SMCEC
(Solar Multiple Condensation Evaporation Cycle). They concluded that
perfect insulation of the unit, high water temperature and ow rate at
the entrance of the evaporation tower, low temperature of water at
the entrance of the condenser and hot water recycling by injection at
the top of the evaporation tower can improve operation and production
of the system.
To consider the simultaneous effect of parameters, Hou et al. [6] used
pinch technology to optimize the performance of the HD process. They
maximized condenser heat recovery through composite curves. They
found that there is an optimum value for water to air ow rate ratio
(L/G). But the effects of humidier inlet temperature and solar collector
efciency were not studied. In another study, Hou [7] evaluates a twostage solar HD desalination process using pinch technology.
A global optimization of the HD process was developed by Soufari
et al. [8]. Effects of different parameters were analyzed and a
mathematical programming model was presented to optimize the
process with different objective functions. Then, the model was
developed by adding the solar part and nally a low-cost design for
solar HD desalination was obtained [9]. In the next step, a unit with
the capacity of 10 l/hr, which has been located at the Iranian Research
and Development Center for Chemical Industries (IRDCI), Karaj, Iran,
was constructed according to optimization results [10]. In continuation
of the previous work, Zamen et al. [11] developed a mathematical model
to study the effect of multi-stage technique on process parameters.
Their results show that multi-stage technique has good improvements
in comparison with the single-stage technique. They concluded that 2stage unit will be the best choice for a multi-stage HD desalination
unit. McGovern et al. [12] investigated the effect of air extraction
injection on the performance and energy recovery of an HD system
through developing the saturation curve and pinch methodology.
They found that a two-stage system would be improved by decreasing
the temperature range of the cycle and pinch point temperature.
In this paper, experimental results of a two-stage desalination unit
with solar collectors designed and constructed on the basis of
mathematical modeling and optimization will be represented.

2. Process description
The single-stage HD unit is distillation under atmospheric condition
by an air loop saturated with water vapor, and has three main sections:
Humidier, dehumidier and heat source as shown in Fig. 1. First, salty
water heated by an external heat source such as solar collectors (points:
23 on Fig. 1) enters to the humidier section. In the humidier (points:
34 on Fig. 1) hot water is in contact with air in a packed bed and a
certain quantity of vapor is extracted by air (points: 56 on Fig. 1).
Then, hot humid air leaves the humidier and enters to the
dehumidier. In this section, water vapor is distilled by bringing the
humid air in contact with a cooled surface which causes condensation
of vapor in the air and production of fresh water (points: 65 on
Fig. 1). Generally, the latent heat of condensation is used for preheating
the salty feed water (points: 12 on Fig. 1).
As mentioned in the previous study [11], the process can be
improved by increasing energy recovery between air and hot water
and consequently reducing external heat requirement. This can be
achieved by reducing minimum temperature approach through
dividing air loop to some smaller loops where each loop may be
considered as a single stage. Based on this fact, Fig. 2 shows the new
process with a number of closed air loops named multi-stage HD
desalination. Feed salt water enters to the rst stage (right hand side
in Fig. 2) and after passing through the rst condenser, enters to the
second stage and so on. Salt water temperature increases after each
stage. The outlet of the last stage enters to the solar water heater system
and then, hot water enters to the last stage and cascades in lower stages

Solar
Collector

3
6

Dehumidifier

Humidifier

1
Salt Water
inlet

4
Drain

Distillate
Water

Fig. 1. A schematic diagram of a single HD process.

to exit from the rst stage. Temperature of the hot water outlet could be
controlled via the design of packed bed and condenser.
The main reason for low thermal energy recovery rate of a singlestage HD unit is the shape of the saturated air curve. If the air enthalpy
curve could be attened, hot and cold water lines could be closer, and
the thermal energy recovery rate could be higher. This issue is
extensively discussed in the previous study [11]. The shape of air
curve could be improved if the mass ow rate of air would vary. The
mass ow rate of air could be changed for each stage and set to an
optimum value. Hence, the heat recovery section is extended and
energy consumption will be reduced. More details of this issue are
presented in the previous study [11].
In this paper, at rst, brief results from modeling the multi-stage
process described in the previous study [11] are presented. Related
equations used in previous studies for single-stage HD [810] are used
for multi-stage process modeling. After that, experimental results of a
2-stage unit constructed in Qom, Iran will be presented.
3. Modeling results
A multi-stage process with separated closed air loops and solar
collector as heat source was selected as the base case. Main equations
of each stage are based on heat and mass balance in humidier and
dehumidier towers presented in [8]. Also, additional equations for
solar collector and packing are used according to relations presented
by Zamen et al. [9]. As shown in Fig. 2, the hot water outlet of each
humidier is the humidier inlet of the next (lower) stage and the
condenser outlet of each stage is the inlet of the upper stage. These
conditions are inserted to the model as new constraints. By adding
related constraints to the closed air cycle (such as top and bottom
temperature limit and ow rate of air in each loop) and inlet and outlet
conditions of hot and cold water between stages, the mathematical
model of the system would be completed.
The mathematical programming model is solved for one- to fourstage processes with the mentioned constraints to achieve the
minimum energy consumption per kg of fresh water production. The
temperature of the humidier inlet water and cooling water entering
the dehumidier is considered to be 70 (C) and 20 (C), respectively.

M. Zamen et al. / Desalination 332 (2014) 16

Solar
Collectors

Third Stage

Second Stage

First Stage

Salt Water

Distillate
Water

Drain
Fig. 2. A simple multi-stage HD desalination unit (with 3stages).

Fig. 3a shows the effect of increasing the number of stages on minimum

specic thermal energy consumption of the process and daily
production per solar collector area. It is observed that increasing the
number of stages from one to two reduces energy consumption by
more than 35%. But, this reduction will be small for systems with
more than two stages. The same effect will be seen in productivity
(ratio of fresh water production to salty feed water) and total distillate
water. As shown in Fig. 3b, daily production per unit solar collector
area increases by more than 40% in the two-stage process, but this
increment will be 4% and 1% for 3- and 4-stage processes, respectively.
The reason why three-stage and higher processes contribute less to
productivity is that the temperature of inlet water of each stage,
which is the outlet of the previous stage, gradually decreases. The less
the temperature of inlet water, the less the productivity of each stage.
Generally when the number of stages increases, energy consumption
per kg of fresh water, productivity and daily production per solar
collector area are enhanced, but the main enhancement occurs from
one- to two-stage process.
On the basis of the mentioned modeling, more results are obtained
that can be summarized as follows:

4. Pilot plant description

A two-stage HD desalination unit utilizing solar collectors was
designed to produce 500 l/day distillate water required for 100 people
residing in an arid village near Qom. A simple process ow diagram of
the two-stage HD is shown in Fig. 4. Salty water from domestic
resources is pumped from feed water tank to the rst and second
condensers successively and heated to the required temperature of
process in heat exchange with the hot water of solar collectors. Then,
hot salty water is sprayed on the second humidier packed bed. The
outlet of this humidier could be pumped either to the humidier of
the rst stage or to the hot water storage tank (for daily demand of
hot water). If the temperature of the outlet stream of the rst humidier
is low enough, a section of that can be recycled to Tank-1 to reduce the
amount of rejected water and also feed the water required. Two
electrical fans with low and medium speeds facilitate air circulation in
the second and rst stages, respectively. The power consumption of
these fans is 100 and 150 W, respectively that can be supplied by solar
PV panels. Fig. 5 presents some pictures from the pilot plant constructed
in an arid village in Qom, Iran.

1600

10

Daily production per

collector area (L/d/m2)

Energy Consumption (kJ/kg)

- Stages with higher temperature have higher productivity.

- In the multi-stage process, higher temperature stages need lower air
mass ow rates. In other words, liquid to gas ow rate ratio (L/G)
reduces with reduction of the humidier inlet water temperature.
In low temperature stages, therefore, a forced draft made by a fan
may be required.

It should be noted that when the number of stages increases, the cost
of desalination unit increases. According to the above explanations, the
two-stage process seems to be the most suitable choice. And nally on
the basis of these results, a two-stage HD desalination unit was designed
and constructed in an arid village near Qom at the center of Iran.

1200
800
400
0

8
6
4
2
0

Number of stages

Number of stages

(a)

(b)

Fig. 3. Specic thermal energy consumption: (a) and daily production per collector area, (b) as a function of the number of stages.

M. Zamen et al. / Desalination 332 (2014) 16

70

Tank3
Solar
Heater
Tank
3

Solar Collectors

55

PU-103
5
2 40

Second Stage
(Low Temp.)

First Stage
(Hight Temp.)

Hot water
consumption

55

1
25

PU-102

Drain
Recycle

Tank2
Distillate water Tank

30

20

Tank1
Salt Feed Water

Salt Water Make up

PU-101
Fig. 4. Process ow diagram of the two-stage HD unit.

According to modeling results for the required amount of fresh

water production and solar radiation of the selected site, dimension
and capacity of equipments were obtained. The desalinator was
constructed as two adjacent towers, each of which count as one
stage that comprises of humidier and dehumidier sections. The
humidier consists of a polypropylene packed bed with a specic
surface area of 240 m2/m3. Cross section area of the humidier in
the rst and second stages is 0.3 and 0.5 m2, respectively. The height
of both stages is equal to 2.4 m. The dehumidier is a nned tube
condenser with copper tube and aluminum ns with a heat
exchange surface area of 30 m2 for both of the condensers. A small

low speed fan is placed at the top of the condenser of each stage
(as showed in Fig. 4). The salty feed water was heated in a tank by
solar heated water circuits. Solar collectors were divided into two
sections, some directed to south and others to southeast to gain
solar heat almost uniformly during all day and benet afternoon
sun heat. An automatic control system was used to control the
operation of the unit according to changes in the temperature of
hot water. When temperature reaches 70 C in the morning, the
system starts and when temperature drops under 50 C, the system
stops because of low production. The system is designed to work
with various ow rates and a maximum of 1400 l/h. Digital

Fig. 5. Pilot plant of the two-stage HD unit constructed in Qom.

M. Zamen et al. / Desalination 332 (2014) 16

Hot days

Cold days

80.0

Stop

75.0
70.0
65.0

Start

60.0
55.0

Stop

50.0

18

18:30

17

17:30

16

16:30

15

15:30

14

14:30

13

13:30

12

12:30

11

11:30

10

10:30

45.0

Fresh Water Production(Lit/hr)

Start

80.0

09:30

Storage tank Temparature (c)

85.0

time

70.0
60.0
50.0
40.0
30.0
20.0
10.0
0.0
50.0

Fig. 6. Storage tank temperature variation during a hot and a cold day.

60.0

70.0

80.0

90.0

Inlet Hot Water Temperature (C)

Fig. 8. Effect of inlet hot water temperature on production rate (water ow rate: 1350 lit/h).

thermocouples are used in various points (as depicted in Fig. 4) for

measuring temperature and two rotameters are used for feed line
of each stage. Flow rate is regulated manually by means of a
regulating valve in the entering line of the second stage.
5. Experimental results
The pilot plant was tested in a certain period of time including
summer (hot) and winter (cold) days. More than 200 tests were
performed starting in the morning and continuing to evening.
Examining the performance of setup for each test takes one day in real
conditions of various days and in each test, about 15 parameters of
water and air streams were recorded. Therefore, more than 3000 data
was gathered during the test period on hot and cold days. In early
hours of the day, solar collectors heated the water of storage tank.
Desalination unit starts when water in the storage tank reaches an
appropriate temperature and fresh water production begins. In
summer, production can start early in the morning before 11 o'clock
when the hot water temperature of the tank reaches 70C. But in winter,
it takes longer till about 12 o'clock or even later. The temperature
variation of the storage tank for a hot and a cold day are shown in Fig. 6.
The hourly production rate of the unit on winter and summer days is
shown in Fig. 7. On both of these days, the unit starts at 11 o'clock.
Because of higher solar intensity and length of hot days, the production
rate on these days is higher than that on cold days. Fresh water
production depends on hot water temperature of the storage tank and
reduces when it drops. On hot days, the temperature of the storage
tank does not change considerably during daylight hours and therefore,

Fresh water Production (lit/hr)

Hot Days

17:30

17

16:30

16

15:30

15

14:30

14

13:30

13:00

12:30

12:00

11:30

Production rate (liters per hour)

Cold Days
100.0
90.0
80.0
70.0
60.0
50.0
40.0
30.0
20.0
10.0
0.0

production is almost uniform during the operation of the unit, but on

cold days, because of lower solar intensity and thus, reduction of the
temperature of the storage tank, production sharply reduces after
about 2 h from the start time. The total production of the unit during
these two days was measured. On summer days, the total production
of the unit is more than twice that of winter production and reached
about 580 l/day.
In this pilot plant, 80 m2 solar collectors were used and therefore,
production reached 7.25 l/daym2 solar collector that is about 40%
higher than the previous pilot plant (Soufari et al., 2009 b). Hence, this
result conrms the theoretical calculation and benets of the twostage process in reduction of specic energy consumption and thus, in
reduction of the initial investment cost.
Fig. 8 shows the effect of the inlet hot water temperature on
production rate. It can be seen that this temperature has an important
effect on production rate. On summer days, the inlet hot water
temperature may exceed 80 C. This increases fresh water production.
Also on winter days, this temperature has the most effect in decreasing
fresh water production.
The effect of inlet water ow rate is presented in Figs. 9 and 10 at
the inlet water temperature of 70 C. As shown in Fig. 9, increase in
water ow rate increases the production rate. But, when water
ow rate is more than 1200 l/h, its increasing rate will decrease.
Also, change of productivity (ratio of the fresh water production
rate to the inlet salt water ow rate) has been shown in Fig. 10 as a
function of inlet water ow rate. It can be seen that an increase in

48
46
44
42
40
38
36
34
32
30
600

800

1000

1200

1400

Inlet water flow rate (lit/hr)

Time
Fig. 7. Hourly production rate on hot and cold days.

Fig. 9. Effect of inlet water ow rate on fresh water production (inlet water temperature:
70 C).

M. Zamen et al. / Desalination 332 (2014) 16

Production Rate (%)

in using even two-stage process. Designing a suitable controller and

using sufcient sensors such as level switches for storage tanks or
thermocouples in various points of the system can help to decrease
operational problems and increase the reliability of the unit. Cost of
these instruments can be easily compensated with reduction of
investment cost of solar collector area.

4.5
4
3.5

6. Conclusion
3
600

800

1000

1200

1400

Inlet Water Flow Rate (Lit/hr)

Fig. 10. Effect of inlet water ow rate on productivity (inlet water temperature: 70 C).

water ow rate decreases productivity. Productivity changes from

3.6 to 4.8 depending on water ow rate. On the basis of the last
experimental results (Soufari et al. [10]), productivity of the single
stage unit can reach 3.54% for inlet hot water temperature of
70 C. Therefore, using two-stage process can enhance productivity
by up to 20% depending on water ow rate.
Fig. 11 presents the contributions of the rst and second stages to
total production of the unit in various salty feed water ow rates. As
depicted in this diagram, more than 75% of the total production
occurs in the stage with higher temperature (the second stage).
Mass ow rate of air circulated in this stage is about half of that in
the rst stage which has lower temperature. Results show that 50%
of the required thermal energy can be supplied by heat recovery in
condensers to preheat the inlet feed water: 35% in the second stage
condenser and 15% in the rst stage condenser. Because of this,
fewer heat sources are needed for the same production and that is
why multi-stage system has higher productivity in comparison to
single-stage unit. Since production is more than the desired value
and the temperature of the outlet water of the second humidier is
more than 50 C in summer, it may be possible to use this stream
as hot water required in the village. Hence, this method can be
used as a combined system for simultaneous production of fresh
water and hot water.
Total dissolve solids (TDS) of salty feed water in village was more
than 4500 ppm and TDS of fresh water during the test period was less
than 100 ppm. This shows the ability of this process in desalination of
brackish water to produce potable water in arid area.
Although using multi-stage process can decrease the investment
cost of the system, more complexity of the system may be a problem

Salt water flowrate(lit/hr)

First Stage production

Second stage production

1350
1200
1080
780
720
0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

Fig. 11. Contribution of each stage to the production of fresh water.

100%

The multi-stage HD process for desalination was introduced.

Theoretical results show that important parameters of the process
such as specic energy consumption, productivity and daily production
per solar collector area improved when multi-stage process was used
instead of single-stage process. But, this improvement is negligible
when the number of stages is more than two. According to construction
cost, a two-stage unit seems to be the most suitable choice. Hence, a
two-stage pilot plant was designed and constructed in an arid area
with 80 m2 solar collector. This unit was tested on cold and hot days.
In summer, the total production of the unit is more than twice that of
winter production and reached about 580 l/day. According to these
results, fresh water production can reach 7.25 (l/daym2) that was
about 40% higher than single-stage unit tested in the previous study
[10]. This led to reduction of required solar collectors and thus,
reduction in investment cost. Also, productivity can reach 4.8% that is
at least 20% higher than the rate obtained in the single-stage unit [10].
These results conrm the theoretical calculation and the benets of
the two-stage process compared with the single-stage process.
Moreover, quality control of inlet and outlet water shows the ability of
this process in desalination of brackish water in arid area to produce
potable water.
Acknowledgment
The authors acknowledge the nancial support provided for this
work by the Rural Water & Wastewater Company of Qom province.
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