Abstract
Cooling and desalination cycles are energy-intensive with low thermal efficiency due to waste heat. Integrating these cycles and recovering waste heat can achieve energy saving and increase their efficiency. This work proposes an effective integration between a water-heated humidification-dehumidification desalination cycle and an open-loop ejector cycle to produce freshwater and cooling energy simultaneously to serve a certain number of inhabitants. After heating the seawater, a part of it is used for the humidification process, while the other portion is further heated to power the open-loop ejector cycle. The proposed hybrid plant is equipped with a three-way valve to match the cooling energy with the amount of freshwater required for a certain number of persons. A mathematical model is built based on energy, exergy, and cost balance across each component to assess the plant’s performance at different operating conditions. Energy utilization factor (EUF), amount of water production rate (WPR), total water price (TWP), and product cost rate are used as evaluation parameters. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis is carried out to estimate the variation in the system performance due to the uncertainty of operating conditions. At the optimal seawater-to-air mass flow rate ratio, the proposed plant could produce freshwater of 1800 Gal/day at an EUF of 1.75 and a TWP of 1.13 $/m3 when the maximum seawater temperature in the HDH cycle is 60 °C and the evaporator temperature is 8 °C. This performance is much better than previously published works, and could be further improved by increasing the maximum seawater temperature.
Published Version
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