Enhancing the productivity of hemispherical solar distillers using dyed flax fibers as natural inexpensive porous materials

Abstract

The rise in the global population over the past years has made freshwater supplies essential for all vital operations. Desalination is now essential for ensuring the sustainability of the world's population. To boost the output of solar distillers, the present experimental study aims to utilize natural inexpensive porous materials to improve the evaporation rates within the distillers, and hence boost their productivity. To achieve this idea, the flax fibers were added to a basin of hemispherical distillers as natural porous materials. To find out how dyed flax fibers affect the productivity of hemispherical distillers, we designed and constructed three simple hemispherical distillers, and compared their performance under the same climate conditions. While the first simple hemispherical distiller (SHD) represented the reference distiller, the second and third simple hemispherical distillers were enhanced with natural yellow flax fibers (SHD-YF) and black dyed flax fibers (SHD-BF), respectively. The results showed that, by employing the natural yellow flax fibers (SHD-YF) and black dyed flax fibers (SHD-BF), the cumulative yield increased by 29.7 and 39.6%, respectively, compared to the reference distiller. Additionally, it was found that the hemispherical distiller utilizing black-dyed flax fibers (SHD-BF) produced distillate water 7.63% more than the hemispherical distiller that used the same material without dyeing (SHD-YF). The SHD-BF has a maximum daily thermal efficiency of 57.31%, which is 39.34% higher than the SHD maximum efficiency. The thermo-economical feasibility showed that using black dyed flax fibers as natural porous materials is a viable option to improve the productivity of solar distillers.