AUGMENTATION OF SOLAR WATER DISTILLER PERFORMANCE WITH PV/T

Abstract

Recently, due to global warming and urbanization, there are many major cities that may face the challenge of day zero next decades. Obviously, water is an indispensable component for maintaining life on the earth. Although portable water is required of the hour, the quantity of available freshwater is impacted significantly by sea-level rise and pollution from industrialization. As a consequence of the global water crisis, different methods for clean water production from brackish water have been studied and developed in practice, however, the solar distillation of water is the most economical and desirable approach due to this method utilize solar energy that is the environmentally friendly and economical resource. Over the last 15 years, the impressive price drop of the photovoltaic solar collector (PV/T) makes them popular and easy to access. As a result, the employment of PV/T in solar stills is emerging as a potential device for water distillation. Therefore, in this paper, an active solar distiller combined with a photovoltaic panel has been reviewed for improvement of the distillate yield and effectiveness of solar photovoltaic. This review work presents a variety of studies on various types of solar still (for example conventional solar still (CSS), double slope solar still (DSSS), stepped solar distiller, and cascade solar still) couples with different solar water collectors (such as flat plate collector (FPC) and evacuated tubes collector (ETC)) and solar photovoltaic modules. It is obtained that the hybrid PV/T active solar still improves the distillate yield, energy efficiency, and exergy efficiency as compared to passive mode. The cooling method enhances the performance of the photovoltaic solar collector as well as the productivity of solar still. Moreover, the environmental economic estimation reveals that the solar still coupled with the PV/T mitigated considerably the amount of CO2. It can be stated that it is suitable to commercialize the hybrid PV/T active solar still for supplying not only electricity but drinking water also. Finally, this review paper also suggests the scope for the research in the future.