Experimental study of desalination using a system integrated by a glass-covered solar collection water basin and a heat dissipating chimney

Abstract

A novel solar desalination system and experimental studies to the performance are presented in this paper. The open system takes the harvested solar energy to heat brackish water in its solar collection chamber and its integrated chimney is a metal-sheet duct to draw ambient air to the water basin and condenses the moisture when humid air flows out of it vertically relying on buoyance force. The solar collection chamber is covered by thermal insulation glasses, while the chimney is made of highly thermal conductive metal and cooled externally by ambient air. The maximum potential of water production from using the system has been analyzed and expression derived. In the laboratory tests, controlled water heating and ambient air temperature were provided to study the water evaporation and harvest performance. The evaporation of water could utilize as high as 84% of the energy supplied, which showed the fact that the chimney-effect-induced airflow takes the moisture away effectively and thus enhances the evaporation. The latent heat from the harvested water against supplied energy reached to a satisfactory value of 26%, which will be more improved in the future. Whereas the energy-efficient water evaporation has proven the advantages of the technology, the cooling capacity from the metal-sheet chimney can be improved in the future by means of increased height of the chimney, enhancement of heat transfer at inner and outer surface of the chimney, or even active cooling to the chimney.