Design and development of portable High yield regenerative solar still With PCM

Abstract

Solar distillation works similar to nature s hydrologic water cycle. Solar newlinedistillation purifies water through evaporation and condensation. High newlinequality drinking water is obtained by this basic purification system. It can newlineremove even non-volatile contamination from almost any source of water. newlineThis low-cost technology will be suited for developing countries like newlineIndia, where the sun shines in abundance. newlineIn the recent decades, number of designs of solar still have been newlinedesigned and manufactured. The system size varies from 0.5 m2 to even newlinea 1000 m2. Despite a great deal of research efforts, this maneuvering newlinetechnology has not been utilised extensively yet. Main challenges in newlineimplementing this simple technology are: (1) its low productivity, and (2) newlinehigher investment costs. Hence the objective of this work is to address the newlinechallenges above by incorporating a low cost modification in the newlineconventional solar still. This work intends to realize a single slope solar newlinestill which can be used for domestic use. This solar still will be relatively newlinehaving better efficiency at a lower initial cost. newlineIn this work a flat plate absorber plate is used over the basin of the newlinestill to increase rate of evaporation of the inlet water. A nylon plate of newlinethickness 8 mm is integrated as the absorber plate over the basin of the newlinestill. The flat plate absorber was kept in such a way that it is parallel to newlinethe glass cover of the still. This ensures maximum absorption of solar newlineradiations into the system. By this modification, the maximum newlinetemperature of the absorber plate achieved was 95oC whereas in newlineconventional still it was only 67oC. In order to improve the wetting area newlinevii newlineof the plain absorber, textiles such as jute and black cotton cloth were newlineused over absorber. This has further improved the system performance. newlineExperimental results obtained from this of modified still were newlinecompared with conventional still. The distillate output increased by 125% newlinewhen a flat plate absorber covered with jute was used. The distillate newlineoutput improved by 122 %