Abstract
Solar stills are one of the most promising and eco-friendly solutions for providing fresh water in arid regions. This study used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling to investigate the effects of operating pressure pop and geometrical parameters on the performance of a Tubular Solar Still (TSS), with an emphasis on vapor flow in the enclosure. The simulation results indicated that water vapor has a higher circulation velocity when operated under vacuum compared with atmospheric conditions, resulting that the yield rate increased by more than 50% at pop < 60 kPa. Three distinct flow regimes were observed at different thermal Rayleigh numbers RaT, which were identified as steady, periodic, and chaotic flow. Steady flow was observed at low RaT, while periodic or chaotic flow was observed when RaT exceeded 105 and water depth Dw exceeded 0.4r. The vapor flow in different regimes was validated by visualization experiments. Based on the simulation results, a correlation was obtained to predict the Nusselt number for a particular TSS design, which showed a deviation of -7.8−7.5% when compared with independent experimental datasets.
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