Performance of a liquid desiccant-assisted solar juice concentration system for barberry juice

•The SJCS saved 62% energy compared to the conventional boiling at the atmospheric pressure.•Increasing the flow rate caused a decrease of 40% in COP of the desiccant bed.•A maximum solar electricity fraction value of 0.76 was found.•Color indices of solar concentrated juice were competitive with conventional method. A closed-loop solar juice concentration system equipped with a liquid desiccant bed was investigated for barberry juice concentration and compared with the conventional evaporation processes. An unglazed flat plate solar collector was used for simultaneous regeneration of the desiccant solution. Experimental evaluation of the designed system was carried out at different flow rates of moving air as the circulating gas. The results showed that concentration time decreased from 480 to 360 min when the flow rate increased from 0.006 to 0.014 kg/s. Furthermore, raising the flow rate caused a decrease of 40% in effectiveness of dehumidification and an improvement of 33% in moisture evaporation rate. A minimum specific energy consumption of 3.33 MJ/kg was achieved at the air flow rate of 0.006 kg/s. The results indicated that all concentration methods significantly (p