Performance Evaluation of Passive Solar Water Distillation System with Separate Surface Condenser and Vacuum Pump

Abstract

Although, earth’s two-thirds surface is covered with water and residual is land; all over the world, access to potable water by the people is narrowing and declining. Now a day, pollution created by manmade activities, results in problem of water paucity. Solar energy with eco-friendly and cost effective benefits has become more popular for water purification. A solar still is commonly used device for water purification by distillation process does not require electricity. More investigation is going on to enhance the system performance and efficiency of the solar still and provide a sustainable water purification. There is a need to improve the single slope solar still performance and increase the production of water distillation. Many researchers, engineers and scientists experimentally studied solar water distillation either using condenser or vaccum tubes. So this work is focused on performance of solar water distillation system with combination of surface condenser and vaccum pump. Performance of solar stills having 20 mm water level in the aluminum basin is tested and compared analytically. The experimental study has been carried out to evaluate glass and basin temperature which increases by 2 to 4 0 C with respect to theoretical. Also investigation results show that, the daily distillate output increases up to 43% by coupling surface condenser and vaccum pump due to increase in rate of evaporation and condensation.