Performance study of fog desalination system coupled with evacuated tube solar collector

Abstract

This study presents an experimental and theoretical investigation of a fog desalination system powered by an evacuated tube solar water heater (ETSWH). This system is composed of a high-pressure fog pump, two fog nozzles each of diameter 0.1 mm, condenser, finned tube heat exchanger, evaporation and condensation duct, and a natural flow ETSWH of ten evacuated tubes integrated with a horizontal storage tank. The effect of different operating parameters on the performance of the system was experimentally investigated. In the theoretical part of this study, the operating conditions of the ETSWH were investigated to optimize the performance of the whole system. Theoretical results showed that increasing water mass in the storage tank increases the efficiency of ETSWH and decreases water temperature. The recommended water mass in the storage tank is 81 kg/m2 of solar collector area tilted at the optimum tilt angle, while the water flow rate from the storage tank should not exceed 0.0032 kg/s for each m2 of ETSWH. From present experimental results and according to the salinity tests, it is recommended to operate the desalination system at inlet water temperature higher than 55 °C.