Experimental Analysis and CFD Modeling for Conventional Basin-Type Solar Still

Mahmoud S El-Sebaey,Tarek Ghonim,Asko Ellman,Ahmed Hegazy

doi:10.3390/en13215734

Abstract

With the rising population, environmental pollution, and social development, potable water is reducing and being contaminated day by day continually. Thus, several researchers have focused their studies on seas and oceans in order to get potable fresh water by desalination of their saltwater. Solar still of basin type is one of the available technologies to purify water because of free solar energy. The computational fluid dynamic CFD model of the solar still can significantly improve means for optimization of the solar still structure because it reduces the need for conducting large amount of experiments. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is presenting a multi-phase, three-dimensional CFD model, which predicts the performance of the solar still without using any experimental measurements, depending on the CFD solar radiation model. Simulated results are compared with experimental values of water and glass cover temperatures and yield of fresh water in climate conditions of Sheben El-Kom, Egypt (latitude 30.5° N and longitude 31.01° E). The simulation results were found to be in acceptable agreement with the experimental measured data. The results indicated that the daily simulated and experimental accumulated productivities of the single-slope solar still were found to be 1.982 and 1.785 L/m2 at a water depth of 2 cm. In addition, the simulated and experimental daily efficiency were around 16.79% and 15.5%, respectively, for the tested water depth.

Highlights

Potable fresh water is significant for the consistency of environment and life, but it is important for industrial and agricultural objectives
According to UNICEF, globally more than 1.1 billion people do not have potable water, and approximately 1000 children die daily because of diseases resulting from undrinkable water
33 of this duct duct with with the saltwater saltwater and with withglass the condensing condensing glass cover, cover, the frontal elevation of the theside frontal vertical saltwater and the with the condensing cover, the elevation of the vertical of the still this and the glass elevation of frontal vertical side of the still was set at mm, while the elevation of the high vertical side was set at mm

Summary

Introduction

Potable fresh water is significant for the consistency of environment and life, but it is important for industrial and agricultural objectives. Potable water shortage has increased dramatically due to pollutants of water resources (rivers and lakes) via industrial dissipation, and the rapid growth of the global population. According to UNICEF, globally more than 1.1 billion people do not have potable water, and approximately 1000 children die daily because of diseases resulting from undrinkable water. Lack of pure water can make war conflicts in water shortage areas [1]. Availability of fresh water is acknowledged to be one of the main issues of humankind. There are some advanced and technologically sophisticated methods to saltwater desalination; viz

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Methods

Results

Conclusion