In this work, we investigated experimentally the thermal performance of a forced cooling tower used in a solar desalination system based on humidification-dehumidification of air. The cooling tower is a counter flow wet one filled with film packing materials. The measured variables were obtained for wide ranges of mass flow rates of air and water as well as for several inlet water temperatures; the tower characteristic and efficiency were then evaluated and expressed in terms of water to air mass flow rate ratio. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V.