Exploring stepped solar still developments with a case study for potable water provision in salt farming regions

Mehta, Pranav; Bhatt, Nilesh; Bassan, Gurmitsingh; Said, Zafar; ElCheikh, Amne

doi:10.1016/j.seta.2024.103700

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Many comprehensive reviews of these enhancement techniques have been conducted over time (Abbaspour et al, 2022;Alatawi et al, 2022;Angappan et al, 2022;Elgendi et al, 2022;Hussein et al, 2024;Kaushal & Varun, 2010;Mehta et al, 2024;Muthu Manokar et al, 2014;Omara, Ahmed, et al, 2024;Sampathkumar et al, 2010;. In general, most systems integrate two or more enhancement techniques (Welepe et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theoretical Performance Assessment of a Parabolic Trough Humidifying Solar Collector-Based Solar Still

Welepe,

Günerhan,

Bilir

2024

Isı Bilimi Ve Tekniği Dergisi

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In this paper, a parabolic trough humidifying solar collector-based solar still (PHSC-SS) is proposed. Its purpose is to apply some important performance improvement techniques to the flat plate humidifying solar collector-based solar still (flat plate HSC-SS), to significantly improve overall system performance. These included the use of parabolic trough solar concentrators and the design of humidifying solar collectors from evacuated tube collectors. The results reveal that, unlike flat plate HSC-SS, which must operate with a turbulent airflow regime to achieve optimum overall performance, PHSC-SS must operate with a laminar airflow regime and high inlet and outlet temperatures of air (at least 55 °C and less than 100 °C, at atmospheric pressure) in the heat collector element. For 900 W/m2 of incident solar irradiance, 2 m2 of solar collector area, and 0,00042 kg/s of air flow rate, the maximum energy efficiency, exergy efficiency and daily freshwater productivity of PHSC-SS were found to be 68,12%, 14,87% and 1,697 kg/h, respectively. Whereas for the same incident solar irradiance and solar collector area, and 0,1 kg/s of air flow rate, those of the flat plat HSC-SS were 72,9%, 1,12%, and between 1,07 – 2,923 kg/h (for inlet and outlet temperatures of air less than 30 °C, at atmospheric pressure), respectively. Although in some extreme cases freshwater productivity of flat plate HSC-SS can be higher than that of PHSC-SS, it should be noted that laminar airflow regime confers great advantages to PHSC-SS. These are higher air temperatures at condenser inlet (which ease water condensation process), no need of an auxiliary cooling device (needed in the flat plate HSC-SS), less mechanical vibrations of system, reduced condenser size, and less energy consumed by air blowers. Furthermore, the upper limit of the PHSC-SS is a PHSC-SS that operates without air flow, but rather by vaporization of water droplets at boiling point from absorber, followed by their suction to condenser, similarly to a flash evaporation.

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