Enhancing the fresh water produced from inclined cover stepped absorber solar still using wick and energy storage materials

Abstract

Renewable energy-based desalination (RED) technique is gaining more importance over the desalination techniques as it appeared to be a promising technique towards low-cost desalination for sustainable growth as the energy demand towards other developments is continuously increasing. This study aims to incorporate energy storage materials and wick materials in the inclined solar to improve the fresh water produced. In this work, the performance of inclined solar still using coconut coir disk and energy storage material is analyzed experimentally. Characterization results showed that the porosity, absorbency, capillary rise, and heat transfer coefficient of 1-year dried coconut coir disk were found as 73.25%, 2 s, 10 mm/h, and 37.21 W/m2K, respectively, which is higher as compared with that of other coconut coir disks. The experimental results on the performance showed that total distillate from novel inclined solar still with hybrid techniques (energy storage materials and wick materials) were recorded as 3645, 4080, 4570, and 4890 ml for 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 1 year, respectively. While the total distillate outputs of an inclined solar still with only wick materials were recorded as 2560, 2670, 2930, and 3390 ml for 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 1-year coconut coir disk wick materials. The novel hybrid techniques used in the inclined solar still with energy storage materials enhanced the yield from 82.25 to 144.5% than the conventional solar still, whereas the inclined solar still with only wick materials enhanced the yield from 28 to 69.5% than the conventional solar still.