DESIGN CONSTRUCTION AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF LOW COST BASIN TYPE SOLAR STILL

A.Mahesh, C.E. Sooriamoorthi, A.K.Kumaraguru Department of Solar Energy, School of Energy, Environment and Natural Resources, Madurai Kamaraj University, (University with Potential for Excellence) Madurai-625021, Tamilnadu, India. Phone: 0452-2458471-366, E-mail:maheshbubathi15@yahoo.co.in 1

introduction
Need to develop alternate technology:
Many countries in arid and semi-arid areas of the world face shortages of potable water. In desert areas fresh water may not be available. In the twenty-first century - no river can satisfy the demands of the worlds biggest cities. Malik et al., (1982) and Duffie and Beckman (1980) reported that solar water desalination systems or solar stills are one of the options to produce drinking water The present investigation drew up a design and fabricated a low cost basin type solar still and evaluated the performance of MADURAIstill using tap the KAMARAJ UNIVERSITY 2

The main objective of the present investigation

In the first experiment, the solar still was designed and also tested for the various input water depths like 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 cm. The second experiment was conducted using tap water, sea water and dairy water and the samples were preheated at two different temperatures of 25 0C and 65 0C respectively. Aims to design a low cost technology (top of the glass, body of the still and insulation).
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Construction details of Basin Type Solar Still

The basing type of solar still has the following major components:
Basin (FRP) Transparent plastic cover Distillate trough Water inlet and outlet Insulation

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 Basin (FRP)
fabricated with 1 mm thick FRP material dimensions of the base of the still were 0.91cm x 0.91cm. basin painted with a muddy black paint (absorptivity 0.88)

Transparent plastic cover

plain transparent plastic sheet of 0.7 mm thickness low thickness gives good transmittance of 98% of solar radiation inclination of 100A from horizontal plastic cover is cheaper than either window glass or tempered glass

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 Distillate trough
slightly tilted U-shaped FRP sheet trough was used to construct the distillate channel

Water inlet and outlet

top of the basin, PVC pipe (to prevent corrosion) was fitted to fill a known amount of water to the basin. Another pipe was fitted at the bottom of the basin for removing drainage water from the basin.

Insulation
bottom and all sides of the still were insulated with agriculture residues (coir pith waste) of 2.0 cm thickness. The insulation material was chosen due to its low cost compared to the production rate of other types of insulation.

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Photographic view of basin type solar still

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Result and discussion

Table: Transmitivity test under different solar radiation
Solar Radiation above the plastic sheet W/m2 550 540 520 794 816 688 805 841 728 700 Solar Radiation below the plastic sheet W/m2 530 529 509 778 799 674 788 824 713 686 Transmitivity ratio 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.98
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Table: Physical parameters of the input samples.

Sample Tap water at 25 0C Tap water at 65 0C Sea water at 25 0C Sea water at 65 0C Dairy waste water at 25 0C Dairy waste water at 65 0C Mean solar Mean ambient insolation (W/m2) temperature 0C 580 35.80 558 30.41 831 26.07 662 27.79 525 23.94 1001 24.49
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Conclusion
In the different depth experimentation, the tap water showed the maximum rate of efficiency with a depth of 1.5cm compared to that of the other water depths With different preheated water samples, the tap water showed the maximum efficiency compared to the other samples.
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Thank You for your kind attention

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