Solid desiccant-based dehumidification systems: A critical review on configurations, techniques, and current trends

•Solid desiccant dehumidification systems design configurations have crucial effect on the system performance.•A comprehensive investigation of several solid desiccant dehumidification systems is established.•State of the art review of the latest developments, advantages, and disadvantages of the different configurations is presented.•Recommendations for research aspects that need further investigations are mentioned. Desiccant dehumidification systems are thermally regenerated systems that can be used either as standalone or as complementary additives for conventional cooling systems. One of their best competitive qualities is the potential to utilize low-grade heat sources for the regeneration process, thus decreasing electrical power consumption and scaling back the emissions of greenhouse gasses. However, up till now, desiccant dehumidification systems saw limited practical applications, due to their relatively high capital costs and low efficiency. To enhance the commercial competitiveness of desiccant dehumidification systems and expand their fairly tiny niche market, it was necessary to improve the system's performance and reliability and reduce their costs. A detailed discussion of the current designs configurations and the main differences between them may help future researchers to come up with novel, innovative designs, to overcome the system's drawbacks and make them actual viable alternative competitors in the dehumidification market. Consequently, this paper presents and analyzes the development of those configurations in the following three main aspects: packed bed, fluidized bed, and rotating desiccant wheel. [Display omitted]