Experimental investigation on a coconut coir packed humidifier for a solar desalination plant

Desalination by humidification dehumidification processes is a promising simple, cost effective and low maintenance concept. It works on the principle of air humidification at high temperature and dehumidification at relatively low temperatures. The present study is for evaluating the performance of the humidifier with coconut coir as packing material used for air humidification in the solar humidification dehumidification (HDH) desalination plant. Experiments were carried out on the humidifier packing for different flow rates of water and its temperature. Humidifier range, effectiveness and efficiency, evaporation rate of water, heat and mass transfer rates are studied by experimentally for different flow rates of hot water and its temperature. The hot water flow rate is varied from 125 to 225 LPH with an increment of 25 LPH and water temperature from 38 to 54°C. It is found that at water flow rate of 200 LPH and at 0.55 m3/s volume flow rate of air, effectiveness of humidifier found to be maximum of 0.74.