Abstract
Solar still is an environmentally friendly technology to mitigate water scarcity in remote area. However, the high cost and low efficiency limits its application. To this end, this study presents a novel three effects tubular solar still (TSS) with greatly improved productivity. This still features a cascade feed design and vacuum operation system, and consists of three enveloped distillation chambers, where each chamber comprises a water trough and a tubular shell. A prototype was fabricated and tested in an experiment conducted over four sunny days in Chengdu, China. The prototype TSS was powered by an evacuated heat pipe solar collector. The freshwater yield of the still was measured at four operating pressures: 95 (local atmospheric), 60, 40, and 20 kPa. Both the operating temperature and the temperature difference between the three chambers decreased when the operating pressure was reduced. The freshwater yields were 3.27, 6.323, 7.056, and 4.287 kg/d, respectively, with energy utilisation efficiencies of 0.77, 1.28, 1.39, and 0.88, respectively. The best overall performance was seen at an operating pressure of 40 kPa. At 20 kPa, freshwater yield and energy utilisation efficiencies were relatively low because of heat transfer deterioration on the outer shell at such low pressure. Based on the experimental results, the optimum operating pressure for the small-scale solar still was determined to be 40–60 kPa.
Published Version
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