Experimental Study of a Heat Pump for Simultaneous Cooling and Desalination by Membrane Distillation

Heat pump systems can simultaneously produce cooling energy for space cooling in hotels, office and residential buildings and heat for desalination using membrane distillation (MD). The MD technique uses a heat input at a temperature compatible with the levels of heat pump condensers (<60 °C). A heat pump prototype coupled with an air-gap membrane distillation unit was constructed and tested. This paper presents the experimental study on a lab-scale prototype and details the two operating modes "continuous" and "controlled" simulating an air conditioning system and a food storage, respectively. The experimental results enable to analyze the performance of the prototype and the physical phenomena involved. Finally, the study shows that this system could be a promising solution to help supplying freshwater to people in hot regions of the world.