Parametric Modelling and Experimental Evaluation of Hemispherical Solar Still for Fresh Water Production

Abstract

Nowadays most of the industrial waste water is contaminated with impurities. The purification of water by the conventional method is costlier as well as, more time and energy consuming. So this work reports that a newly designed solar still with hemispherical top cover for industrial waste desalination purpose. The theoretical and experimental investigation of a hemispherical solar still with flowing water over the cover has been presented. The daily distillate output of the system is almost increased by lowering the temperature of the cover by water flowing over it at a uniform velocity. The fresh water output is presented for a typical day in Sri Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore (11° North, 77° East), India. Explicit expressions for the different performance parameters such as water temperature, cover temperature, air temperature, ambient temperature and distillate output have been obtained. The output from the top cover cooling effect of hemispherical solar still has also been compared with the still without cooling method.