Abstract
The ever-increasing water stress and availability of fresh drinking water are becoming a major challenge in rural and urban communities. The current high-end and large-scale technologies are becoming way more expensive and not friendly to the environment. In this regard, solar still is becoming a prominent and promising future technology due to its environment-friendly nature, less maintenance and operational costs, and simple design. The technological challenge regarding solar still is its low distillate yield. In this study, an attempt has been made to investigate the effect of tin oxide (SnO2) on the absorption surface of solar still towards improvement in sunlight absorption, which would lead to high distillate production rates. Various concentrations of SnO2, i.e., 0.5wt%, 1 wt%, 3 wt%, 5 wt%, 7 wt%, 10 wt%, 15 wt%, and 20 wt%, have been mixed in black and applied on the absorber plate to further optimize the suitable concentration. The experiments have been performed in both indoor (simulated) and outdoor conditions. An increase in surface temperature of absorber plate has been observed with increasing concentration of SnO2 under both the indoor and outdoor conditions, which is due to high solar spectrum absorption properties of SnO2 in the ultraviolet (UV) and near to far-infrared (IR) regions. The highest surface temperature of 101.61°C has been observed for specimens containing 15 wt% SnO2 in black paint under indoor conditions at 1000W/m2 irradiation levels, which is 53.67% higher compared to bare aluminum plate and 16.91% higher compared to only black paint coated aluminum plate. On the other hand, the maximum temperature of 74.96°C has been recorded for the identical specimens containing 15 wt% SnO2 under uncontrolled outdoor conditions. The recorded temperature is 47.96% higher than the bare aluminum plate and 14.88% higher than the black paint-coated aluminum plate. The difference of maximum temperatures under indoor and outdoor conditions is due to uncontrolled outdoor conditions and convective losses.
Highlights
Fresh drinking water is an essential need for human survival, and it plays a vital role in environmental sustainability
The technology of solar still is improving at an incredible pace to avoid future scarcity of fresh drinking water
SnO2 nanoparticles have been investigated in an attempt to increase the sunlight absorption of the solar still absorber plate
Summary
Fresh drinking water is an essential need for human survival, and it plays a vital role in environmental sustainability. Due to the increase in population, the demand for fresh drinking water is increasing. Solar energy is a practical and feasible approach for properly utilizing seawater and International Journal of Photoenergy producing freshwater out of it. Solar desalination has been observed as the most feasible and cost-effective technique to produce fresh water at a lower cost than the other possible seawater desalination processes [3]. The experimental study investigated the performance of an installed solar condensation device on the course of the antiseptic ultraviolet wastewater, which has wholly been evaluated in practical terms for the thermal output, conduction output, and production output of freshwater. The findings show the relative error rates of around 7.2% and 4.9% for day and night thermal outputs. Laboratory and experimental data support the view that solar desalination systems work very well [5]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call