Modeling and Simulation of Either Co-Current or Countercurrent Operated Reverse-Osmosis-Based Air Water Generator

Abstract

Technologies for obtaining drinkable water are becoming more important as global water consumption steadily increases and climate change progresses. One possibility for obtaining water is the extraction of water vapor from ambient air by means of air water generators (AWG). Previous studies in the field of AWG have mainly dealt with the condensation of humidity on cold surfaces with a cooling system or with absorption and thermal desorption. In this paper, another possibility for AWG is investigated, specifically AWG using absorption and reverse osmosis. For this purpose, models have been set up for an absorber operated in countercurrent and reverse osmosis membrane modules operated in co-current and countercurrent. With these models, simulations with different boundary conditions were then carried out using the programming language Python. The simulations have shown that the reverse osmosis membrane modules operated in countercurrent generally have a lower energy demand and require fewer reverse osmosis stages than those operated in co-current.