Experimental study and analysis of single slope solar still integrated with Phase Change Material

Abstract

Solar thermal systems are playing important role to encounter environmental issues like global warming, in the last two decades they replace conventional systems to create an eco-friendly environment. Lot of research have been undergone on solar thermal systems to improve their performance and efficiency, but still the area is wide open for improvement because of demand on renewable sources increase. As their is need for increasing the performance of solar thermal systems, phase change materials could serve as energy storing device during abundant available of energy. For solar thermal systems the major challenge is energy availability will not be round the clock, in order to clear this hurdle phase change materials backing served as a better support. The biggest challenge of developing countries today is to provide clean drinking water, as there are many conventional systems to convert saline water into drinking water their main disadvantage is pollution of environment due to harmful emissions. Hence, solar thermal systems with phase change materials are considered as best option in production of clean drinking water due to their operation by renewable energy, compactness and zero emissions. Phase change materials are coupled with solar system experimentally, and their behaviour and performance were characterized with results and observation, here the phase change material paraffin wax is embedded in copper tubes coupled with solar system is employed in production of clean drinking water; their performance and efficiency are compared with single slope solar still without phase change material. The thermal stability, corrosive resistance and impressive properties of paraffin wax and thermal conductivity of copper were tied together to single slope solar still for improving performance and efficiency of clean drinking water production. It is observed solar still without phase change material could generate drinking water from saline water only during day time, but the solar still coupled with phase change material embedded in copper tubes showed better results with 11 percent increase in production of drinking water even during dark hours.