Simulation of Bed Adsorption Of Advanced Adsorption Desalination Systems

One of the critical elements of an adsorption desalination system is the adsorption bed. System dynamics of a 2-bed single stage silica-gel plus water-based AD system was analyzed. A great pattern is expanded using energy conservation and mass connected with the kinetics of the adsorption/desorption process. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling was handled for simulation of the adsorption process for a rectangular finned tube-based adsorption bed featured with silica gel adsorbent substance. For the simulation, the adsorbents are considered as a solid volume with defined porosity based on Darcy equation. Adsorption and desorption mode of the adsorption bed has been simulated. The CFD techniques were then applied to study fin thickness and fin height. The results showed that decreasing the fin thickness increased the water uptake by up to 8% and decreased the fin height from 30mm to 20mm, which resulted in an increase of the water uptake up to 17%.