Water desalination and air conditioning consumes huge amount of energy that mostly come from fossil fuels, which produces harmful emissions detrimental to the environment. This work is concerned with the use of a new hybrid cooling and water desalination system driven by solar thermal energy. The system primarily consists of an evacuated tube solar collector, LiBr absorption chiller, and a humidification-dehumidification (HDH) unit. Seawater is used to cool the condenser and absorber of the chiller as well as the condenser of the HDH unit. The heat rejected by the absorber is used to drive the HDH unit. Thermodynamic model of the system has been formulated and simulated using engineering equation solver (EES) software. The results show that the coefficient of performance (COP) of the chiller nearly remain constant with increase in seawater temperature at the absorber inlet. The average COP of the chiller is found to be 0.76. The hybrid system efficiency increases with increase in the seawater temperature mainly due the effect of latent heat of water condensation. The rate of fresh water production increases with increase in the seawater inlet temperature. This resulted in a higher outlet temperature at the absorber exit, leading to a higher energy input to the HDH unit. Gained output ratio (GOR) increases with increase in seawater temperature. This is due to the direct proportionality of the GOR to the amount of fresh water produced. The results also revealed that increasing the flow rate of seawater causes the decrease in the fresh water production due to the corresponding decrease in the temperature of the seawater.

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