EFFECT OF SOME FACTORS ON WATER DISTILLATION BY SOLAR ENERGY

Abstract

Solar energy may be used for operating any desalination process to be employed directly for distillation of saline water in equipment which serves both as a solar energy absorber and as a distiller In this study, a solar distillation model is proposed and subjected for testing the concerned parameters. The parameters aimed to evaluate the distiller model performance and were: the water salinity (28, 35 and 58 mmoh/cm, (ds/m), the water depth (6,9 and 12cm), the glass cover thickness (2,4 and 6mm), the percentage of daylight (43.7 , 47.4 and 52.1%), the solar radiation, the ambient air temperature, the wind speed and the relative humidity. The performance of the distiller model was characterized as the distillation yield and the collector efficiency. The maximum distillation yield was about 5 L/m 2 .day at 6 cm water depth, 6 mm glass cover thickness, 28 mmoh/cm water salinity and 52.1% percentage of daylight (during summer season, July and August, 1997). A statistical design based on stepwise regression analysis was utilized which proved to be significant for the included variables at the level of 1% significance.