Performance investigation on solar still with plate fins and latent heat energy storage

Abstract

Solar still is a cheap and portable solar distillation system that can purify brackish water into potable water and is ideal for domestics use. Low productivity is a major issue that needs to be addressed in solar stills. In the present work, the efficiency of the fabricated single slope single basin solar still was enhanced by the incorporation of plate fins over the basin liner of the still. The daily productivity was further increased by attaching a latent heat energy storage unit to the still. Paraffin wax was used as phase change material (PCM) in the energy storage unit. Experiments were conducted on modified solar still for the following two cases (i) with mere plate fins and (ii) with plate fins and PCM. A 40.6% increase in productivity was observed for the solar still with mere fins and the productivity is increased by 94.51% for the solar still incorporated with both fins and PCM when compared with that of conventional still.