In this thesis, experimental and numerical studies have been carried out to investigate the performance of a solar desalination system working on humidification-dehumidification principle under the climatological conditions of Ankara, Turkey. The desalination unit was configured mainly by a double-pass flat plate solar air heater with two glass covers, pad humidifier, storage tank and dehumidifying exchanger. The system used in this work is based on the idea of closed water and open air cycles. A computer simulation program based on the mathematical model was developed by means of MATLAB software to study the effect of different environmental, design, and operational parameters on the desalination system productivity. In this simulation program, the fourth order Runge-Kutta method was used to solve the energy balance equations simultaneously and numerically. In order to compare the obtained theoretical results with experimental ones and validate of the developed mathematical model of the system, an experimental study has been carried out. For that, an experimental set-up was designed, constructed and tested at the solar house of the Mechanical Engineering Department of METU. In addition, the existing solar desalination system was integrated with an evacuated tubular solar water heater unit (closed water circulation) and performance of the system has been studied experimentally.

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