Solar Water Distillation Using Paraffin Wax as Phase Change Material

Abstract

All life on earth depends on energy and the cycling of carbon. Energy is essential for economic and social development and also poses an environmental challenge. The world’s dependence on fossil fuels began approximately 200 years ago. Availability of fossil energy resources, peak oil era and this is the time for end of the fossil fuel era, price and environmental impact and various renewable resources and use of it. The twenty first century is rapidly becoming the perfect energy storm, modern society is faced with volatile energy prices and growing environmental concerns as well as energy supply and security issues. Solar and wind energy are now providing the lowest cost options for economic and community development in rural regions around the globe. Energy and water are the key to modern life and provide the basis necessary for sustained economic development. Due to a growing world population and increasing modernization global energy demand is raising during the current century. Finding the sufficient supplies of clean and sustainable energy for the future is the global society’s most challenge for this century. The future will be depends on a renewable sources such as solar, wind and biomass. There are large numbers of phase change materials (PCM’S) that melt and solidify at wide range of temperatures, making them attractive in a number of applications. PCMs have been widely used in latent heat thermal storage systems for heat pumps, solar engineering and spacecraft thermal control applications. The use of PCMs for heating and cooling applications for buildings has been investigated within the past decade. The experimental results computed in the field of water distillation process using solar energy in the presence of energy storage materials i.e paraffin wax are discussed in this paper.