EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF A SOLAR STILL-COLLECTOR SYSTEM FOR SOLAR DESALINATION IN RURAL AND DESERT COMMUNITIES

Elnono, Mahmoud Ahmed

doi:10.21608/mjae.2020.101821

EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF A SOLAR STILL-COLLECTOR SYSTEM FOR SOLAR DESALINATION IN RURAL AND DESERT COMMUNITIES

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Mahmoud Ahmed Elnono

Ag. Eng. Dept., Fac. of Ag., Ain Shams Univ., Cairo, Egypt.

10.21608/mjae.2020.101821

Abstract

A passive solar still (single-slope solar still) was connected to a flat plate collector, to be an active one, through a heat exchanger on the bottom of the still basin, and a small size pump to circulate the working fluid (distilled water) in a closed and separate loop from the basin water in order to transfer extra thermal energy to the solar still for improving the productivity of the solar still, as well as avoiding corrosive effects on the collector material or forming scales which clog the collector due to the natural chemicals of salty, brackish, or contaminated water which is the main problem of direct augmentation .The system was designed, manufactured and tested at Ag. Eng. Dept., Fac. of Ag., Ain Shams Univ., Cairo, Egypt (). A complete description of the designed system is presented. Various experiments were carried out. Measurements were taken on hourly basis during the daylight hours for several days of three months (July, August and September, 2011),for the active solar still system and the solar still alone. The experiments performed at 0.05m water depth using saline water (28608 ppm ). A comparative analysis between the experimental results of two solar stills showed that the average daily production rate (Aug., 2011) of the active solar still was increased by about 45.22%, it was around 1.83 times higher than the passive solar still. The thermal efficiency of the active solar still was lower than the passive solar still by an average of 3.9%. Economic analysis was also made and payback period of the experimental setup was discussed.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Processing Engineering of Agricultural Products

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