Review on adsorption materials and system configurations of the adsorption desalination applications

Adsorption desalination is an emerging desalination technology with low energy consumption, which is based on the principle of desalination by using the adsorption and desorption characteristics of porous adsorbents for water vapor. Compared with the traditional distillation and membrane methods, adsorption desalination can use renewable energy sources such as solar energy, geothermal energy, or industrial low-grade waste heat as the driving heat source, and thus has the excellent characteristics of being green and pollution-free. However, as a newly developed desalination technology, there is relatively little theoretical and experimental research on adsorption desalination, and it is still at the stage of small-scale experiments. This paper firstly introduces the adsorption theory and circulation process to clarify the key elements of this desalination method. Further, based on the available results, the related researches are analyzed and summarized according to the critical elements of the adsorption desalination system, i.e., preparation of adsorbents, optimization of system configuration, cyclic operating conditions, and combination systems. Finally, the future directions to be focused on for future research prediction are discussed, which will be useful for related studies in this field.