Modeling of an integrated air gap membrane distillation unit utilizing a flat plate solar collector

This work investigates the incorporation of a flat plate solar collector into an air gap membrane distillation (AGMD) system to produce pure water from water wells in Egypt. First, it considers the metrological data for Borg El Arab city, which is located at the north of the western desert in Egypt. A three-dimensional AGMD numerical model is established and solved using ANSYS 2019 commercial software, after setting suitable boundary conditions. Once the pure water flux is predicted at certain feed water inlet and outlet temperatures, a thermal analysis of the flat plate solar collector is introduced to estimate the required solar collector area to produce the required pure water flux. •Three-dimensional model was used to perform a parametric study on AGMD.•A flat plate solar collector is used to eliminate the electric source.•The effect of water salinity on the system performance is introduced.•The proposed system showed promising results for water production.