Productivity Analysis of Tubular Solar Still with Heat Absorption Material

Abstract

The integration of solar stills with materials capable maximum heat absorption and transfer heat is an effective option for producing potable water from brackish water. Nevertheless, no single organic phase change material exhibits all the necessary advantageous properties, such as a particular temperature of melting and latent heat of fusion, to function well in a solar still under varying environmental circumstances. A tubular solar still comprising five copper cylinders filled with paraffin wax has shown a significant increase in distillation yield. The impact of depth of basin water on performance of stills was examined (steel balls with water depth of 4 cm) using MTSS under environmental conditions for city of Bhopal located in Madhya Pradesh, India. The result revealed a cumulative yield for CTSS and MTSS as approximately  4.2 and 5.9 kg/m² respectively. The result reveals that total hourly yields for CTSS and MTSS are approximately 1.28 and 1.68 kg/m² respectively. The production of solar distillate rose by 48.8% with the use of steel balls in MTSS, in contrast to the basic scenario without steel balls, where the output of solar distillate was 60.2% in CTSS.