Experimental Study on Solar Still Desalination System Integrated with Solar Collector and Phase Change Material

Abstract

The significant of providing healthy and potable freshwater has increased during the last decades due to the rapid raising in the international population along with the continuous demand for drinkable water. Solar energy is one of the renewable resources that can be used for the desalination purposes in order to produce portable water. This paper presents an experimental study on a solar still desalination system for potable water productivity. Due to low potable water productivity of solar still, a flat plate solar collector and paraffin wax as a phase change material (PCM); were used in this research in order to improve the daily productivity. The results showed that the accumulated productivity the modifications in Case 2, 3 and 4 improved the productivity of the conventional solar still of Case 1 (0.135) by 121%, 85% and 164%, respectively. It can be concluded that the active system (Case 2) has higher productivity improvement than the passive system (Case 3), while the combination of the passive and active systems (Case 4) has the highest performance which overcomes the limitations of the both systems.