WADERE

WADERE is a 24 months research project, funded under PRIN 2022 call by MUR. The WADERE project intends to develop and pre-validate at lab-scale (TRL3) a low-grade thermally-driven sorption process to provide desalinated water using low-grade heat sources (<60°C). The consortium consists of 4 research units: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) with two units ITAE and ITC, Politecnico Torino (POLITO), Universities Padova (UNIPD) and Trieste (UNITS), providing their complementary competences to improve the overall performance of the technology. R&D activities will focus on the experimental and numerical development of novel composite adsorbent materials with enhanced sorption properties and low driving temperature, the optimization of heat and mass transfer performance inside the desalination reactors, the investigation of dropwise condensation over innovative coatings and the numerical study of the process through a meshless simulation approach. The most innovative materials and small-scale components will be tested at the Clean Water Center of POLITO, where a flexible test rig is designed for testing this kind of technology. Furthermore, a numerical modelling platform will be setup to simulate the achievable performance, based on the small-scale development activities, paving the way for the definition of future upscaling of the technology and identifying possible techno-economic optimization routes to accelerate its future marketability.