Experimental investigations of developed solar still for increment in efficiency and rate of distillate

Abstract

The purity of water has become a very important aspect now-a-days by virtue of diminishing and polluted fresh water sources and increased ground water contamination levels due to arsenics and fluorides. Whilst many technological solutions of purification being invented; the most effective and cheapest method worldwide is only been - distillation, which yields about 99-99.7 % pure water. Solar distillation is the best way in terms of availability of energy, as solar energy is freely available throughout the year. But the other distillation processes require high energy to be produced by either burning fuel or at the expense of electricity. Thus solar distills are better than any other means. Over the years, the efficiency of solar stills has been reached to 32-35% and rate of distillate to 2-2.5 litres. An effort has been made for the improvement in design of stills by incorporating the reflectors and phase change material (PCM) for energy storage. The experimental investigations proved that the efficiency of the solar still raised up to 42 % and rate of distillate to 4 litres.