Exergy and thermo-economic analyses of various tubular solar still configurations for improved performance

Abstract

ABSTRACT Solar energy is being used for the purpose of water distillation since long. The present work demonstrates the comprehensive experimental investigation of various heat transfer enhancement arrangements on tubular solar still for its performance improvement. These arrangements include; case-1: Tubular solar still (TSS) with flat plate basin (TSS-FP), case-2: TSS with U-corrugated basin (TSS-UA), case-3: TSS with the coupled cylindrical parabolic collector (TSS-CPC). According to the available literature, the exergy and economical analysis of tubular solar stills are not explored much in the previous studies. Thus, a comparative thermo-economic analysis, exergy analysis and system productivity analysis have been carried out. In addition to this, the study investigates the effects of different basin water depths on system productivity. It has been found that the case-3: TSS-CPC gives the highest productivity; it was 37.75% and 80.63% higher as compared to the case-2 and case-1 respectively. Also, in the same arrangement, the enhancement in the exergy efficiency was around 48.6% and 85.2% as compared to case-2 and case-1 respectively. The per liter cost of water obtained by TSS-FP, TSS-UA, and TSS-CPC were about 0.00592, 0.00511, and 0.00567 US $/m2 respectively. The study concludes that the U-Corrugated basin surface, less basin water depth, and the secondary heating arrangement improve the productivity of the tubular still significantly.