Experimental study on impact of textile material spread over a flat plate absorber on the productivity of modified single-basin solar still

Abstract

The solar still is an environmental friendly method of producing distilled water from brackish water to overcome drought. In remote areas, conventional solar still system is used to produce potable water. However, such solar still is not widely used because of its relatively lower water flow rate at outlet. The objective of this work is to improve the outlet flow rate of distilled water that can be produced from a conventional solar still. An investigation has been carried out by incorporating a Formica sheet as an inclined absorber surface into a conventional solar still spread with a textile material. This modified solar still is supplied with brackish water as input in active mode. The flow rate of water into the system is controlled to just wet the textile material spread on the inclined absorber surface. In order to calculate the exact effect of the inclined absorber surface spread with textile ma-terial, the modified still is compared with the conventional still. The experimental results indicate that the system temperature has increased significantly which in-creases outlet flow rate by 80%.