Advanced heat and mass recovery design in a two bed adsorption desalination system

Highlights: • The heat recovery is between the condenser, the adsorption bed and the evaporator. • The mass recovery plan is provided between the adsorption beds. • The mathematical model is evaluated by valid experimental results. • Using the recovery mode, the amount of water produced increases by 200%. Adsorption desalination system (ADS) has captured much attention due to utility of waste heat as well as renewable energy resources. This article presents an advanced mass and heat recovery design for the ADS. Not only did the suggested cycle increase the amount of desalinated water, but also caused the system performance ratio to grow compared to similar advanced systems. During this recovery cycle, in addition to the heat transferred from the condenser to evaporator, a heat exchange directly occurred, between the adsorption beds and evaporator. The appropriate thermodynamic mathematical model of the ADS was obtained and the validity was attested using valid experimental data. The advanced heat and mass recovery system presented in this paper indicates an improvement of about 31% in terms of water production (the unit of water produced is cubic meters per ton of silica gel) and approximately 8% in terms of system performance ratio in comparison with our previous design of recovery system. Compared to the conventional systems, without a heat and mass recovery mode, improvements of about 200 and 51 percent, regarding the amount of water produced and the performance ratio were observed, respectively.