Energetic performance of a solar driven absorption refrigeration system integrated with humidification dehumidification desalination system

•Performance of integrated cooling and desalination system is investigated.•Primary energy ratio using lithium chloride is better than lithium bromide.•The energy utilization factor enhanced by 347 % as compared with separated systems.•The maximum gain output ratio is 7.07 at September. Integrating cooling and desalination systems with a single heat source is a shortcut technique to meet the shortage of fresh water and energy as well as enhancing the efficiency of energy utilization. In this paper, the energetic performance of a double effect vapor absorption refrigeration system integrated with humidification-dehumidification desalination system has been optimized·H2O–LiCl achieves higher system primary energy ratio and needs lower heat source temperature by 5 °C and 11 °C at evaporation temperature of 10 °C and 4 °C, respectively as compared with H2O–LiBr. Therefore, a parametric study has been performed to get the optimum operating conditions for the integrated system using H2O–LiCl as working pair by varying generation, condensation, and evaporation temperatures. The optimum system conditions are generation, condensation, and evaporation temperatures of 103 °C, 103 °C and 7 °C, respectively. The corresponding system COP, GOR and EUF are 1.471, 2.391 and 3.863, respectively. Finally, the transient performance of the proposed integrated system assisted by solar energy has been evaluated for Marsa-Matrouh city in Egypt. The proposed integrated system could save 71.2 % of the input energy without solar assistance and 88.5 % with solar assistance as compared with separated systems.