ملخص البحث :

The scarcity of water facing the world is one of the biggest challenges of this century. Thischallenge requires research plans in the ¯eld of water desalination that is not suitable for humanuse or the harvesting of water from the air. In this work, the performance of the water harvestingunit from the ambient air is studied. For this purpose, a vapor compression system is designed andbuilt, a 372 W reciprocating compressor is selected depending on the use of a small family consistingof four persons. The components of the vapor compression system are designed depending on thecompressor power. The unit evaporator is modi¯ed to condensate the water vapor associated withthe air instead of cooling the air. The e®ect of volume °ow rate of air across the evaporator isstudied. The range of air volume °ow rate is from 224 to 244 m3/h, as well as the operation mode ofthe unit which either continues to condensate or freeze the water vapor on the evaporator is alsostudied. The result showed that the water harvesting unit can work at a relative humidity as low asabout 20%. The maximum water production for the unit is 7.9 l/day with a power consumption of1.76 kW-h/l at the volume °ow rate of air is 230 m3/h. When an evaporative cooler is turned on inthe test chamber, the amount of water production increases to about 13.11 l/day with a powerconsumption of 1.068 kW-h/l, for the same volume °ow rate of air mentioned above.