Evaluating a corrugated wick solar still with phase change material, and external spiral copper heating coil

Abstract

We are aware of the fact that the problem of a freshwater shortage is continually being compounded by the rapid growth in population and the wide range of diverse sectors that require water to work. The use of solar stills (SSs) as one of the thermal solutions to this issue is also well recognized, but their poor production makes them less advantageous. Thus, this work presents an experimental investigation to enhance the corrugated wick solar still's (CWSS) performance employing external spiral copper water heaters, and Nano Phase Change Material (PCM). In an experimental investigation, both a CWSS and a conventional SS (CSS) were tested. Using spiral copper water heating coils (CWSS-SC) and Nano-PCM (CWSS-SC-PCM-Ag), the CWSS has been tested. The effectiveness of CWSS and CSS was tested in three different sets of tests under identical meteorological conditions. The improvement in output/thermal efficiency for CWSS, CWSS-SC, and CWSS-SC-PCM are 112 %/51 %, 171 %/58.2 % and 202 %/63 %, respectively. By integrating spiral water heating coils, the distillate production for CWSS-SC was elevated to be 171 % greater than CSS's. So, the addition of the spiral water heating coils thereby increased the CWSS production by roughly 59 %. Besides, CWSS-SC-PCM-Ag has been proven to be 202 % more productive than CSS with 63 % thermal efficiency. Accordingly, contrasted to the condition with no PCM, using Nano-PCM improved the CWSS-SC productivity by about 31 %. According to the economic analysis, distilled freshwater costs 0.028 and 0.021 $/L for the CSS and CWSS-SC-PCM, respectively.