Abstract
The search for potable water for quenching global thirst remains a pressing concern throughout many regions of the world. The demand for new and sustainable sources and the associated technologies for producing fresh water are intrinsically linked to the solving of potable water availability and hitherto, innovative and energy efficient desalination methods seems to be the practical solutions. Quenching global thirst by adsorption desalination is a practical and inexpensive method of desalinating the saline and brackish water to produce fresh water for agriculture irrigation, industrial, and building applications. This chapter provides a general overview of the adsorption fundamentals in terms of adsorption isotherms, kinetics, and heat of adsorption. It is then being more focused on the principles of thermally driven adsorption desalination methods. The recent developments of adsorption desalination plants and the effect of operating conditions on the system performance in terms of specific daily water production and performance ratio are presented. Design of a large commercial adsorption desalination plant is also discussed herein.
Key Words
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Al-kharabsheh S, Goswami DY (2004) Theoretical analysis of a water desalination system using low grade solar heat. J Solar Energy Eng Trans ASME 126(2):774–780
Ehrenman G (2004) From sea to sink. Mech Eng 126(10):38–43
Ng KC, Wang XL, Gao LZ, Chakraborty A, Saha BB, Koyama S, Akisawa A, Kashiwagi T (2006) Apparatus and method for desalination. Patent, Publication Number: WO/2006/121414
Papadopoulos AM, Oxizidis S, Kyriakis N (2003) Perspectives of solar cooling in view of the developments in the air-conditioning sector. Renew Sustain Energy Rev 7(5):419–438
Ruthven DM (1984) Principles of adsorption and adsorption process. Wiley, Boston, MA
Suzuki M (1990) Adsorption engineering. Elsevier, Amsterdam
Rouquerol F, Rouquerol J, Sing K (1999) Adsorption by powders and porous solids. Academic, San Diego
Srivastava NC, Eames IW (1998) A review of adsorbents and adsorbates in solid–vapour adsorption heat pump systems. Appl Therm Eng 18(9–10):707–714
El-Sharkawy II, Kuwahara K, Saha BB, Koyama S, Ng KC (2006) Experimental investigation of activated carbon fibers/ethanol pairs for adsorption cooling system application. Appl Therm Eng 26:859–865
Glueckauf E (1955) Formula for diffusion into sphere and their application to chromatography. Trans Faraday Soc 51:1540–1551
Liaw CH, Wang JSP, Greenkorn RH, Chao KC (1979) Kinetics of fixed-bed adsorption: a new solution. AIChE J 25:376–381
Li Z, Yang RT (1999) Concentration profile for linear driving force model for diffusion in a particle. AIChE J 45(1):196–200
Sircar S, Hufton JR (2000) Interparticle adsorbate concentration profile for linear driving force model. AIChE J 46(3):659–660
El-Sharkawy II, Saha BB, Koyama S, Ng KC (2006) A study on the kinetics of ethanol-activated carbon fiber: theory and experiments. Int J Heat Mass Transf 49:3104–3110
El-Sharkawy II, Saha BB, Chakraborty A, Kuwahara K, Koyama S, Ng KC (2006) Determination of an improved linear driving force equation for adsorption of ethanol on activated carbon fiber. In: Proceedings of the 3rd Asian conference on refrigeration and air-conditioning, Gyeongju, Korea, vol 1, pp 129–132
Akkimaradi BS, Prasad M, Dutta P, Srinivasan K (2001) Adsorption of 1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane (HFC 134a) on activated carbon. J Chem Eng Data 46:417–422
Prasad M, Akkimaradi BS, Rastogi SC, Rao RR, Srinivasan K (1999) Heats of adsorption for charcoal-nitrogen systems. Carbon 37:1641–1642
Critoph RE (1988) Performance limitations of adsorption cycles for solar cooling. Solar Energy 41(1):21–31
Cacciola G, Restuccia G (1995) Reversible adsorption heat pump: a thermodynamic model. Int J Refrig 18(2):100–106
El-Sharkawy II, Saha BB, Koyama S, Srinivasan K (2007) Isosteric heats of adsorption extracted from experiments of ethanol and HFC 134a on carbon based adsorbents. Int J Heat Mass Transf 50(5–6):902–907
Chakraborty A, Saha BB, Koyama S, Ng KC (2006) On the thermodynamic modeling of the isosteric heat of adsorption and comparison with experiments. Appl Phys Lett 89:171901
Chakraborty A, Saha BB, Ng KC, Koyama S, Srinivasan K (2009) Theoretical insight of physical adsorption for a single component adsorbent–adsorbate system: I. Thermodynamic property surfaces. Langmuir 25(4):2204–2211
Dunne AJ, Mariwala R, Rao M, Sircar S, Gorte RJ, Myers AL (1996) Calorimetric heats of adsorption and adsorption isotherms. 1. O2, N2, Ar, CO2, CH4, C2H6, and SF6 on silicalite. Langmuir 12(24):5888–5895
Dunne AJ, Rao M, Sircar S, Gorte RJ, Myers AL (1996) Calorimetric heats of adsorption and adsorption isotherms. 2. O2, N2, Ar, CO2, CH4, C2H6, and SF6 on NaX, H-ZSM-5, and Na-ZSM-5 zeolites. Langmuir 12(24):5896–5904
El-Sharkawy II (2006) Development of adsorption systems powered by renewable energy or waste heat sources. Ph.D. Thesis, Kyushu University, Japan
Fan Y, Luo L, Souyri B (2007) Review of solar sorption refrigeration technologies: development and applications. Renew Sustain Energy Rev 11(8):1758–1775
Ito M, Watanabe F, Hasatani M (1996) Improvement of both adsorption performances of silica gel and heat transfer characteristics by means of heat exchange modulation for a heat pump. Heat Transf Jpn Res 25(7):420–431
Dehler FC (1940) Silica gel adsorption. Chem Metall Eng 37:307–310
Saha BB, Koyama S, Alam KCA, Hamamoto Y, Akisawa A Kashiwagi T, Ng KC, Chua HT (2003) Isothermal adsorption measurement for the development of high performance solid sorption cooling system. Trans JSRAE 20(3):421–427
Ryu Z, Zheng J, Wang M, Zhang B (1999) Characterization of pore size distributions on carbonaceous adsorbents by DFT. Carbon 37(8):1257–1264
Ng KC, Chua HT, Chung CY, Loke CH, Kashiwagi T, Akisawa A, Saha BB (2001) Experimental investigation of the silica gel–water adsorption isotherm characteristics. Appl Therm Eng 21(16):1631–1642
Wang X, Zimmermann W, Ng KC, Chakraborty A, Keller JU (2004) Investigation on the isotherm of silica gel + water systems. J Therm Anal Calorim 76(2):659–669
Valenzuela DP, Myers DP (1989) Adsorption equilibrium data handbook. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Sircar S (1991) Isosteric heats of multicomponent gas adsorption on heterogeneous adsorbents. Langmuir 7(12):3065–3069
Tóth J (1971) State equations of the solid–gas interface layers. Acta Chim Acad Sci Hung 69:311–328
NACC (1992) PTX data for silica gel/water pair, Manufacturer’s proprietary data. Nishiyodo Air Conditioning Co Ltd., Tokyo, Japan
Chihara K, Suzuki M (1983) Air drying by pressure swing adsorption. J Chem Eng Jpn 16:293–298
Cremer HW, Davis T (1958) Chemical engineering practice, vol 6. Butterworths, London, pp 286–287
Sakoda A, Suzuki M (1984) Fundamental study on solar powered adsorption cooling system. J Chem Eng Jpn 17:52–57
Wang XL, Ng KC (2005) Experimental investigation of an adsorption desalination plant using low-temperature waste heat. Appl Therm Eng 25:2780–2789
Ng KC, Chua HT, Wang XL, Kashiwagi T, Saha BB (2003) Prototype testing of a novel four-bed regenerative silica gel–water adsorption chiller. In: ICR 0042, Washington, DC
Saha BB, El-Sharkawy II, Chakraborty A, Koyama S (2007) Study on an activated carbon fiber–ethanol adsorption chiller: Part II – performance evaluation. Int J Refrig 30(1):96–102
Wang XL, Chua HT, Ng KC (2006) Experimental investigation of silica gel adsorption chillers with and without a passive heat recovery scheme. Int J Refrig 28:756–765
El-Sharkawy II, Thu K, Ng KC, Saha BB, Chakraborty A, Koyama S (2007) Performance improvement of adsorption desalination plant: experimental investigation. Int Rev Mech Eng 1(1):25–31
Ng KC, Wang X, Lim YS, Saha BB, Chakraborty A, Koyama S, Akisawa A, Kashiwagi T (2006) Experimental study on performance improvement of a four-bed adsorption chiller by using heat and mass recovery. Int J Heat Mass Transf 49(19–20):3343–3348
NUS (2008) Adsorption desalination to quench global thirst. Engineering Research, 23(3), Oct. 2008. National University of Singapore (NUS)
Thu K, Ng KC, Saha BB, Chakraborty A, Koyama S (2009) Operational strategy of adsorption desalination systems. Int J Heat Mass Transf 52(7–8):1811–1816, March
Acknowledgments
The authors express sincere thanks to King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) for the financial support through the project (WBS R265-000-286-597). The authors would also like to thank Mr. Kyaw Thu, a NUS Ph.D. student in the ME Department, for his help in experimental investigations of the AD plant (46–47).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ng, K.C., El-Sharkawy, I.I., Saha, B.B., Chakraborty, A. (2011). Adsorption Desalination: A Novel Method. In: Wang, L.K., Chen, J.P., Hung, YT., Shammas, N.K. (eds) Membrane and Desalination Technologies. Handbook of Environmental Engineering, vol 13. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-278-6_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-278-6_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ
Print ISBN: 978-1-58829-940-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-59745-278-6
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)