Tanuj Singh
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, Rupnagar-140001, Punjab, India
Ravi Beniwal
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, Rupnagar - 140001, India
Kapil Garg
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, Rupnagar - 140001, India
Himanshu Tyagi
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, Rupnagar 140001, Punjab, India
A numerical study of harvesting water from the air was performed. The system also uses a humidifier with water sourced from wastewater or available saline water and thus incorporates wastewater management simultaneously. The heat required for the regeneration of the desiccant can be taken from some low-grade energy source or from solar energy. The system was mathematically defined and solved using the MATLAB software to analyze the variation of input parameters such as Dry Bulb Temperature (DBT), Relative Humidity (RH), the inlet temperature of the desiccant, the Mass Flow Ratio (MFR) of desiccant to air are varied, and their effect on the system performance was observed. The results obtained by the thermodynamic analysis of the proposed Atmospheric Water Harvesting (AWH) system show that about 3.8 kgh-1 of water can be extracted from the air at ambient conditions of 40°C DBT and 40% RH. The results show that AWH systems can be used to generate new sources of water in arid regions also.