Performance analysis of solar desalination system with thermal energy storage materials

Abstract

The primary issue for human community is to meet the growing demands for freshwater resources, which is constantly diminishing as a consequence of high population growth rates. People who live in inaccessible places around the country, particularly in underdeveloped countries, currently face significant barriers to safe drinking water. Desalination of water with hardly any environmental impact is a pressing need. Solar desalination is the least expensive technique for obtaining drinkable water since it runs purely on solar energy, which is abundant and readily available in environment. Thermal energy storage materials (TESMs) are being used to store energy during the day and discharge it at night, and they have therefore been utilized in solar desalination systems to improve the performance of solar stills. The current study focuses on the experimental analysis of solar desalination systems using low-cost, locally available thermal storage materials, such as pebbles. Two solar desalination units with a basin area of 800x600 mm2 were built for this study. All solar desalination units have a 6 mm thick glass cover that is slanted at 250 with the horizontal plane. The utilization of thermal storage materials has been revealed to have a significant impact on the distillate output of a solar desalination unit. Throughout the day and night, the setup has been used to supplement the distillate. When 6 L of water were put into the basin, the modified solar still with stones produced 16.66 % more water than the unmodified still, 27.36 % more when 7 L were used, 20.54 % for 10 L, 14.81 % for 15 L, 11.13 % for 20 L, and 3 % for 25 L. Total dissolved solids (TDS) were used to assess the distillate's quality. This research presents a low-cost distillation technology that can be used to improve the production of drinkable water.