Analysis and Modelling of Single Slope Solar Still at Different Water Depth

Abstract

Although, more than two thirds of the earth is covered with water and remaining is land, all over the world, access to potable water by the people is narrowing and decreasing day by day. Most of the human diseases are due to polluted or non-purified water. Nowadays, each and every country is facing a problem of huge water scarcity because of pollution created by manmade activities. Adequate quality and reliability of drinking water supply is the fundamental need of all people on this earth. Fresh water, which was obtained from rivers, lakes and ponds, is becoming scarce because of industrialization and population explosion. Water purification using solar energy has become more popular because it is eco-friendly and cost effective. A solar still is commonly used device for water purification and it doesn’t require any electricity for distillation of water. Solar distillation is a technology for producing potable water from brackish water or underground water of low quality at low cost. This method can reduce water scarcity problems in the world. In a solar still, water is evaporated using solar energy, which is a form of renewable energy and collected as distillate water after condensation of the vapour. This method can produce distilled water after removal of impurities. Since last three decades, more research work is going on to improve the system performance and efficiency of the solar still and provide a sustainable water purification. A variety of solar distillation devices have been developed with different materials and in different shapes in different locations to improve the efficiency of solar distillation. There is a strong need to improve the single slope solar still performance and increase the production of water distillation. The various factors affecting the productivity of solar still are: Climatic Parameters, Operational Parameters and Design Parameters. Among all these three parameters, main focus on the Operational Parameters; which are: Salinity, Mode of Operation, Amount of Dyes and Water Depth. From my literature survey, many researchers, engineers and scientists experimentally studied solar water distillation using Phase Change Materials. There is no more work. So, this present paper is focused on performance of solar water distillation using Phase Change Materials. In this study Magnesium Sulfate Heptahydrate (MgSO4 7H₂O), Sodium Sulphate (Na₂S 7H₂O) is used as phase change material and Titanium oxide is a Nano-material used for energy storage material. Among these energy storage materials Magnesium Sulfate Heptahydrate (MgSO4 7H₂O) improves the efficiency of solar water distillation.

Keywords: solar still, productivity, efficiency, phase change materials.