Performance enhancement of a v-corrugated basin hemispherical solar distiller combined with reversed solar collector: An experimental approach

Abstract

The low freshwater production of the solar distillers is one of the most crucial obstacles to their effective use in distillation applications. In this work, an attempt has been made to ameliorate the distilled yield of the hemispherical solar distiller. This was fulfilled by using a v-corrugated basin and reversed solar collector in order to augment the evaporation area and assist in reflecting more solar irradiance onto the outer surface of the v-corrugated basin. Two hemispherical solar distillers, namely; v-corrugated basin hemispherical distiller integrated with a reversed solar collector (VBHD-RSC) and traditional flat basin hemispherical distiller (TFBHD) were designed and examined at the same outdoors conditions of El-Oued (33°27′N, 7°11′E), Algeria. Moreover, a comparative energic-economic analysis of the two proposed hemispherical distillers has been conducted in terms of freshwater productivity, daily energy efficiency, and freshwater distillate cost. The results show that the daily accumulative yield of the VBHD-RSC was 7.85 kg/m2.day which was higher than that of TFBHD by 68.82%. Moreover, the daily energy efficiency was obtained to be 59.70% and 35.52% for VBHD-RSC and TFBHD, respectively. Furthermore, the economic assessment indicates that the usage of a v-corrugated basin embedded with a reversed solar collector was more cost-efficient as it reduces the cost of freshwater production by 27.12% compared to TFBHD.