Desalination 183 (2005) 137142

The effect of coupling a flat-plate collector on the solar still productivity

O.O. Badran*, H.A. Al-Tahaineh
Faculty of Engineering Technology, Mechanical Engineering Department, Al-Balqa0 Applied University, PO Box 331006, Amman 11134, Jordan Tel. 962 6 5679773; Fax 962 6 4613452; email: o_badran@yahoo.com Received 3 January 2005; accepted 21 February 2005

Abstract Experimental Investigation to study the effect of coupling a flat plate solar collector on the productivity of solar stills was carried out. Other different parameters (i.e. water depth, direction of still, solar radiation) to enhance the productivity were also studied. Single slope solar still with mirrors fixed to its interior sides was coupled with a flat plate collector. It has been found that coupling of a solar collector with a still has increased the productivity by 36%. Also the increase of water depth has decreased the productivity, while the still productivity is found to be proportional to the solar radiation intensity. Keywords: Solar still; Solar collectors; Productivity enhancement

1. Introduction Distillation technologies have been used for about a century in land-based plants and on ships to provide water for a crew. The regular use of distillation technologies accelerated after World War II, as the demand for fresh water in arid countries. The cost for distillation has been decreasing rapidly, especially in recent years with the introduction of efficient, more cost*Corresponding author.

effective technologies. Distillations are one of many processes available for water purification, and sunlight is one of several forms of heat energy that can be used to power that process. Sunlight has the advantage of zero fuel cost but it requires more space (for its collection) and generally more costly equipment. In principle, the water from a solar still should be quite pure. The slow distillation process allows only pure water to evaporate from the basin and collect on the cover, leaving all particulate contaminants behind.

Presented at the Conference on Desalination and the Environment, Santa Margherita, Italy, 2226 May 2005. European Desalination Society. 0011-9164/05/$ See front matter 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved doi:10.1016/j.desal.2005.02.046

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The distillation using the solar still is very limited, so that different methods have to be chosed to improve the productivity [1,2]. Many experimental and numerical investigations have been done on different designs of solar stills, such as [311]. Despite the advantages of solar stills, they are recognized as low productivity devices in comparison with the thermal desalination methods and they depend on sunshine periods. Nowadays many research work are moving towards increasing the efficiency of the solar stills by using enhancers such as solar collectors [2,6,11], which is examined in this work. In areas where saline sources have been tapped by boreholes, and the water is too salty for humans to consume without serious consequences (as the case in the region of Al Alzrak in the north-east of Jordan), the introduction of distillation promises to enhance the quality of water and to improve health standard. On June, 1998, the Al-Rai and Al-Dustor Newspapers stated that published reports of impurities in some Amman water systems and national concern over carcinogens in drinking water had created a growing market for what are called home water purifiers. The solar desalination project will play great role in the Jordan badia (desert inhabitant) mainly to quench the thirst of small communities at isolated sunny areas and can have a limited supply to the local market with distilled water. Also the still product is suitable for chemical use in laboratories and for charging and topping up the batteries and suitable to some extent for medical uses, also to electric irons, and any place where dissolved solids should be avoided for not clogging up the appliance. The present solar still is relatively simple in construction with low maintenance cost and can be operated by any laborer amongst the inhabitants. The utilization of solar still systems is becoming very active in Arab world

where the solar radiation intensity is very high. Our goal for the present single slope solar still project is to design and develop plans for a still which could be replicated using off the shelf materials, also to improve the output of the simple basin solar still through the coupling of a flat plate collector under Jordanian climatic conditions. 2. Experimental setup Lack of good drinking water kills more children (especially in the Third World) than almost anything else. Microorganisms in a water supply can cause dysentery, which can lead to diarrhea and fatal dehydration. Recently, many health workers throughout the world have developed inexpensive solarpowered distillation units, or stills, and pasteurization ponds that provide people with all the fresh water they need. The present solar still consists of asymmetric green house type solar still coupled with solar collector. It has a black painted basin of 1 m2 area filled with brackish water supplied to it from a collector which preheats the water to act as an enhancer to the solar still. The evaporating basin is covered by a sheet of clear glass (to allow sunlight to reach the water) which is tilted at a slight angle (35 ) to let the fresh water that condenses on its underside trickle down to a collecting trough. A trough running along the bottom side of the glass cover ensures the collection of the distilled water towards the collecting vessel. The glass also holds the heat inside the still. An inlet pipe is also fixed at the rear wall of the still for feeding brackish water. Holes were drilled in the body of still to fix thermocouples to measure the temperature of water in the basin, the inner and outer glass temperature, and the vapor inside the still. A flat plate

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collector (shallow box, 1.75 m long, 0.6 m width and 0.15 m thicknesses) has been used to preheat the water entering the still; the collector is made of seven parallel steel tubes, 1/2 inch diameter and 1.8 m length. The tubes are welded to 0.7 mm thin sheet coated by a black selective layer fixed on insulator (rock wool). In the design of the present solar still the following facts are highly considered:1. To be simple in construction, operation and maintenance. 2. To be rigid and firm enough to resist the worst prevailing environmental condition. 3. Local materials to be used as far as possible. The schematic diagram of the system is shown in Fig. 1. The greenhouse type solar still has glass cover (4 mm thick) at an inclination of 35 facing south. A rectangular trough is fixed at the downstream end of the slope for the collection of the distilled water which leads it to the collecting vessel. The still is filled each morning or evening, and the days production is collected at the time. Silicon rubber sealant is used to prevent leakage from any gap between the glass covers and the still box. The side walls and the base of

the unit are insulated with rock wool (thermal conductivity = 0.035 W/m2 K) of 6 cm thick. A constant head tank was used to control the brine level inside the still by a float type regulating valve for one level of water depth for 2 cm during the period of the experimental work. The basin of the solar still is made water tight to avoid water leakage and the inside surface is blackened to absorb maximum solar radiation. It should probably be baked in the sun for a while before it is used in order to free the paint of any volatile toxicants which might otherwise evaporate and condense along with the drinking water. The bottom and sides of the basin are insulated to reduce the heat losses to the surrounding. The solar still has been designed installed and operated at Faculty of Engineering Technology at Al-Balqa0 Applied University in Amman. 3. Results and discussion In this paper we report on daily experimentation of a single slope solar still and the same still coupled to a flat plate collector. The system was operated continuously for several months

1-Tgoot

2-Tgin

3-Tv

4-Tw

5-Ta

Fig. 1. A schematic diagram showing the arrangement of the still-collector systems and the location of the thermocouples (1-Tgoot; 2-Tgin; 3-Tv; 4-Tw; 5-Ta).

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(October to December) under different climatic conditions, covering months with moderate and low sunshine. The work targeted to enhance the still output through improving the still operations condition by using a flat plate collector. The temperatures of brackish water, glass covers, vapors and ambient temperature are recorded continuously. The still unit is mounted on an angled iron stand; it is movable to make any adjustment to the angle of the axis of the still. The standard orientation of the solar still is assumed to be toward south in order to receive maximum solar radiation. The influence of climatic conditions and mainly solar radiation, on the system production is investigated without coupling the collector (still alone). The variations of the daily solar still output and the average solar radiation for different days in October are shown in Fig. 2. The figure shows that the still productivity is proportional to the solar radiation intensity, which depends on climatic condition of each day. The effect of the ambient temperature is shown in Fig. 3. It can be seen from Fig. 3 that gradual increases in the ambient temperature tend to increase the yield of the solar still. The effect of coupling the solar still with a solar collector is shown in Fig. 4. From Fig. 4, it

Fig. 3. Effect of ambient temperature on passive solar still productivity.

can be concluded that there is proportionality in water production with respect to the basin water temperature. The higher the temperature the higher the output will be from the distillation system. This high productivity is expected as a result of coupling the collector with solar still. This can be explained by the fact that solar collector will preheat the feed water into the solar stills. Solar collectors have a higher efficiency than solar stills. Increased temperature of the water in the basin increases the rate, as well as the total output of distillate. The percentage of enhancement in daily productivity due

Fig. 2. The relation of solar intensity and still output during October.

Fig. 4. Comparative variation of still productivity.

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to coupling of solar collector (3510 mL) is calculated, and found to be 36% more than that when the still was operated alone (2240 mL). Fig. 5 shows the results of the experiments performed during the month of October to determine the optimum direction angle for the still by changing the still direction few degrees toward the east and west from the geographic south, to detect the optimal angle that will give the higher yield. Such deviation is required as the movement of the sun varies in direction between summer and winter. From the productivity of the still, it can be seen that the optimal angle is found to be 10 to the west of the geographic south during the winter season in Jordan. These results show that tracking the sun is one of the preferred methods to increase the still yield. It is clear from the figure that the effect is not significant. Fig. 6 shows the productivity of the still as a function of the basin water depth, it is evident that the productivity decreases with the increase of water depth. This increase in still productivity as the depth decreases could be attributed to the lower heat capacity of the basin water that results in a higher temperature in the basin and increase the evaporation rate. It can be concluded that the output of the still is maximum for the least water

Fig. 6. The effect of water depth on solar still production.

depth in the basin (20 mm). The 20 mm depth was used for all experiments in order to determine different effects on the solar yield. The average daily output of the solar still for three months is shown in Fig. 7. The maximum solar still yield occurred in October at which the solar irradiation was the highest during the period of the experimental tests. Fig. 8 presents the variation of hourly temperatures for a test carried out on 21th of Nov using a still coupled with a collector. All the temperatures showed similar trends of increasing with the increases of solar radiation during the day. It was found that the

Fig. 5. The effect of solar still direction on the still output.

Fig. 7. The average daily production for different months of the year.

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solutions to supply fresh water to small isolated communities (Jordanian badia) with no technical facilities.

References
[1] P.I. Cooper, The transient analysis of glass covered solar still, PhD Thesis, University of Western Australia, Australia, 1970. [2] G.N. Tiwari, S.K. Shukla and I.P. Singh, Computer modeling of passive/active solar stills by using inner glass temperature. Desalination, 154 (2003) 171185 [3] M.A. Hamdan, A.M. Musa and B.A. Jubran, Performance of solar still under jordanian climate. Energy Conv. Management, 40 (1999) 495503. [4] A.A. Badran and M.A. Hamdan, Inverted trickle solar still. International. J. Solar Energy, 17 (1995) 5160. [5] H. Al-Hinai, M.S. Al-Nassri, B.A. Jubran, Effect of climatic, design and operational parameters on the yield of a simple solar still. Energy Conv. Management, 43 (2002) 16391650. [6] M. Boukar and A. Harmim, Effect of climatic conditions on the performance of a simple basin solar still: a comparative study. Desalination, 137 (2001) 1522. [7] A.S. Nafey, M Abdelkader, A. Abdelmotalip and A.A Mabrouk, Solar still productivity enhancement. Energy Conv. Management, 42 (2001) 14011408. [8] B.A. Abu-Hijleh and H.M Rababah, Experimental study of a solar still with sponge cubes in basin. Energy Conv. Management, 44 (2003) 14111418. [9] A.N. Minasian, A.A. Al-Karaghouli and S.K. Habeeb, Utilization of a cylindrical parabolic reflector for desalination of saline water. Energy Conv. Management, 38(7) (1997) 701704. [10] B.A. Akash, M. Mohsen and S.W. Nayfeh, Experimental study of the basin type solar still under local climate conditions. Energy Conv. Management, 41 (2000) 883890. [11] K. Voropoulos, E. Mathioulakis and V.A. Belessiotis, Experimental investigation of the behavior of a solar still coupled with hot water storage tank. Desalination, 156 (2003) 315322.

Fig. 8. Hourly variation of temperatures.

water temperature was the highest then followed by the vapor temperature. The highest temperatures occurred between the hours of 1416 p.m. The ambient temperatures ranges were between 20 and 30 C. 4. Conclusion These solar energy distilling plants are relatively inexpensive, low-technology systems, especially useful where the need for small plants exists. However, there is still much room for innovation and improvement. It is well, known, that solar distillation exhibits a considerable economic advantage over other salt water distillation processes, because of cost-free energy and reduce operating costs. The operation of a solar distillation system coupled with a solar collector has been investigated experimentally. Comparison of the output between coupled and stand alone still was studied. It was found that the productivity of the coupled still is found to be 36% higher than the still alone. It can be concluded that, the present still design leads to higher distilled water output due to higher basin water temperature. Producing fresh water by a solar still with its simplicity would be one of the best