Solar HDH Desalination for Coastal Hotels: Literature Review and Research Trend

¹ Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras (UNAH), Facultad de Ingenierla, Ingenierla Mecanica, Tegucigalpa, Honduras
² Universidad de Sevilla, Doctorado GENI, Sevilla, Spain
³ Universidad Tecnologica Centroamericana (UNITEC), Facultad de Postgrado, Honduras

^a danilo.barahona@unah.hn
^b victoria.posas@unah.hn
^c ronal.perez@unah.hn
^d edgar.ramos@unah.hn
^e cortega@unah.edu.hn
^f cortega@us.es
^g cortegaj@unitec.edu

Abstract

Water is essential for the hotel industry, its disposition is key to ensure the viability of the tourism sector that grows disproportionately day by day plus the scarcity of water in the world, this situation forces hotels to find alternatives to meet the demand for water. One of the preferred alternatives is solar water desalination. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate through this first literature review whether solar desalination is a viable technique to meet the demand of potable water in a medium-sized hotel in a coastal area. We conducted a review of the literature published between 1987 and 2018, the subject of which is solar HDH desalination. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were formulated and applied to determine the most relevant studies to achieve the purpose of this research. The review found that solar desalination can be feasible to apply in hotels if they have large amounts of land for installation or the demand for water is not large. However, there are more economic methods to desalinate water while at the same time producing more water with similar sizes of facilities. Such results have practical implication for the use of the systems of hotels in general.