Duplicating freshwater productivity of adsorption desalination system using aluminum metal filings

In this paper, improving the overall heat transfer coefficient by adding aluminum species to silica gel has been studied theoretically. An adsorption desalination system is proposed, and a lumped theoretical model conducted to investigate employing the metal additives within the adsorbent bed with and without a heat recovery between condenser and evaporator. A 30% of the total mass of the adsorbent bed contents was considered to be replaced by aluminum species. According to this, the overall heat transfer coefficient has been increased by 260%, which shows a good impact on the performance of the adsorption system. Daily water productivity was increased by 70% at the worst-case, reaching up to 17 m³/day/ton of silica gel without heat recovery. By employing heat recovery with the metal filing, the daily water productivity reached 42 m³/day/ton of silica gel which is four times the productivity of the classic silica gel-based adsorption desalination system.