Water from Air Production System based on Solar Energy in Egypt

Abstract

Fresh water supplies are among the most limiting conditions in arid regions. Drinking water shortage is chronic, acute and widespread in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. The extraction of fresh water from the atmosphere has been adopted and developed as a new technology to provide water in remote areas. This paper concentrates on the extracting of potable water from air in remote areas using solar energy. A theoretical study for extracting water from atmospheric air is presented and performance of water production system based on standalone PV system was simulated and evaluated for two sites in Egypt; namely, Hurghada and Khargha Oasis. The unit extracts water by using solar thermal energy as the heating source for air and solar photovoltaic energy for supplying water production system driven fan. Perturb and observe (P&O) method for maximum power point tracking (MPPT) has been designed and simulated for the proposed PV system. A Mathematical and simulation models using MATLAB/ SIMULINK software have been developed for evaluating the performance of the proposed system. The effect of climate conditions; ambient temperature and solar radiation on the PV system output power based on P&O controller was also demonstrated. It was found that more amount of water from atmosphere can be extracted from densely humid and highly solar radiation regions.