PL EN
Productivity Enhancement of a Double Slope Solar Still Coupled with a Solar System
 
More details
Hide details
1
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Malaysia
 
2
Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, 11942 Alkharj, Saudi Arabia
 
3
Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and IT, Amran University, 9677 Quhal, Amran, Yemen
 
4
Department of Civil and Construction Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia
 
 
Publication date: 2020-05-01
 
 
Corresponding author
Y.H. Mugahed Amran   

Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, 11942 Alkharj, Saudi Arabia
 
 
J. Ecol. Eng. 2020; 21(4):255-263
 
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
Water shortage is rising to become a global challenge due to variations in climate change and population increment. Among the existing options highlighted by researchers is converting the seawater to potable drinking water using desalination technology. However, these processes are expensive and require much energy to operate. Solar desalination technology had been reported to be highly adequate as it utilizes the natural sunlight and the simple concepts of evaporation and condensation to produce the drinking water. The main challenge till date is the low productivity of the technology which must be adequately improved in order to enhance productivity and optimize performance. In this study, the productivity and efficiency of conventional double slope solar still were assessed using a solar system. Two solar still models (active and passive) were fabricated with the same evaporation and condensation areas. The troughs were made of stainless steel with dimensions of 50 cm × 32 cm × 5 cm. While the cover was made of glass with dimensions of 48 cm × 60cm × 0.3 cm and the inclination angle was 60o. In addition, the solar system consisted of two solar panels with 50 W capacity each, one battery of 100Ah-12V, a charging controller of 30A, and a single immersed DC water heater of 50W-12V capacity. Both models were tested simultaneously for two sunny days 24 hours each. Results showed that the water productivity of the active solar still was 55% higher than the passive solar still. On 15th July the total amounts of solar still productivity were 7.85 L/m2/d and 19.3 L/m2/d for active and passive stills, respectively. This is due to the existence of the heating element in the active still which allowed it to produce water for 24 hours continuously. Moreover, trough temperature was found to be the highest for both models because it was made from steel material. Finally, the produced water in both cases was found to be directly proportional to parameters such as solar radiation intensity and ambient temperature.
Journals System - logo
Scroll to top