Experimental, Analytical and ANSYS Computation of Novel Cascade Solar Desalination Still

Abstract

This study presents a simple device using solar radiation as a source of energy to convert brackish water to freshwater. To enhance the productivity of the cascade of solar stills, a new structure of the absorber plate with sloped surfaces and baffles was proposed to present a slight water layer thickness and improve the amount of solar radiation incident. A physical model is developed taking into account various parameters which affect the distillate yield of solar sills. In the present work, the modeling of the cascade solar still uses ANSYS Fluent V18 to investigate the yield. A three-dimensional model was considered to simulate the temperature of the water, absorber plate, and freshwater productivity. A comparison was conducted based on the CFD simulation results, experimental and approximate analytical model data. It showed a reasonable agreement of the results obtained using the analytical model with the experimental and the simulation using ANSYS Fluent of different working parameters especially the productivity. The best performance was obtained on 15/07/2018, with a productivity rate of more than 1.67 kg/m2.hr.