Experimental study of solar still having variable slope tilted wick in the basin to enhance its daily yield

Abstract

In this study, conventional solar still was modified by adding variable slope tilted wick in the basin so that day and night productivity of still can be enhanced. The tilted wick was constructed in such a way so that tilt angle can vary according to the incident angle of solar radiation i.e. from 0° to 45°. The experiments were conducted under similar weather conditions for several days. The depth of basin water of still was taken 3 cm for all set of experiments. Initially, the experiments were conducted on 30° tilted wick with different flow rate (0.10 g/m2/s, 0.20 g/m2/s, 0.30 g/m2/s) on the wick inside the basin of modified solar still. The range of flow rate was taken based on trial experiments so that wick don’t get dry throughout the day. The overall distillate of modified still with 30° tilted wick at 0.10 g/m2/s, 0.20 g/m2/s and 0.30 g/m2/s flow rate was found to be 3.51 kg/m2, 3.60 kg/m2 and 3.41 kg/m2 respectively. Further, the experiments with tilted wick were conducted at 0.20 g/m2/s flow rate and 3 cm water depth in the basin by varying angle of inclination of tilted wick at 0°, 15°, 30° and 45°. It have observed that the overall distillate at 0°, 15°, 30° and 45° angle of tilt of wick was found to be 3.1 kg/m2, 3.51 kg/m2, 3.60 kg/m2 and 3.41 kg/m2 respectively. The maximum distillate was observed at 30° which is almost equivalent to the latitude of the location and sunrays falls directly on the wick surface. It has been found that day and night distillate of modified still with 30° remains 37.17 % higher than that of conventional still. The maximum cumulative efficiency was found to be 43.16% for the modified still with tilted wick at 30°.