EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF BRACKISH WATER DISTILLATION IN SINGLE SLOPE SOLAR STILL USING SENSIBLE HEAT STORAGE MATERIALS

Abstract

Solar distillation is one of the important methods of getting clean water from brackish and seawater using the renewable energy of the sun. The passive type solar still represent most economical method to supply drinking water for domestic applications for decentralized level. Experimental measurements of solar distillation productivity for single slope still were conducted at the testing field of the Mechanical Engineering department, Coimbatore Institute of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India. The influence of basin water quantity and amount of energy storage materials are examined and the performance is compared. The target of this research is to find best way to keep the excess heat by energy storage materials and release it during off-sunshine hours for increment in distillate output and efficiency. Various sensible heat energy storage materials like pebbles, blue metal stone, red brick, granites and white marbles were used as energy storage medium. The daily yield of black granite still is higher than other energy storage material stills and is equal to 3.216 kg/day/m², which is 29% higher than that of the still without energy storage materials.

Keywords:  fresh water, passive still, solar distillation, energy storage material

Article DOI: http://doi.org/10.15544/RD.2017.086