SOLAR DISTILLATION

Schematic cross section of a bay of a basin-type solar still

 Solar radiation is transmitted through the cover and absorbed by the salt water and the basin. The solution is heated, water evaporates, and vapor rises to the cover by convection where it is condensed on the underside of the cover. Condensate flows by gravity into the collection troughs at the lower edges of the cover; the covers must be at sufficient slope that surface tension of the water will cause it to flow into the troughs without dropping back into the basin. If seawater (approximately 3.5% salt) is used as feed, the concentration is usually allowed to double before the brine is removed, so about half of the water in the feed is distilled off.

Major energy transport mechanisms in a basin-type still

Basic thermal network for a basin-type still

 An energy balance on the water in the basin (and the basin itself), per unit area of basin, can be written as

where the subscripts, e, r, c, and k represent evaporationcondensation, radiation, convection, and conduction, respectively. The subscripts b and g refer to basin and glazing (cover), and c is the transmittance of the cover and the water film or droplets on its underside. An energy balance on the cover, neglecting its capacitance and solar energy absorbed by it, can be written as

 The radiation exchange between basin and cover qr,b-g is calculated by:

The cover is usually glass, and during operation a thin layer of condensate forms on most of its undersurface. Dunkle recommends that the term be written in the form

 In a horizontal enclosed air gap, a relationship between Nusselt and Rayleigh numbers is

where the temperature difference in the Rayleigh number, T', is an equivalent temperature difference accounting for density differences due to water vapor concentration differences. For air and water,

where pwb and pwg are the vapor pressures of water in mm Hg of the solution in the basin at Tb and of water at the cover temperature Tg. Temperatures are in Kelvin.

From the previous two Equations the convection coefficient in a still is

and the heat transfer between the basin and cover is

By analogy between heat and mass transfer, the mass transfer rate can be written as

and the heat transfer by evaporation-condensation is

where mD is the mass transfer rate in kg/m2s, and hfg is the latent heat of water in J/kg. The heat transfer terms from cover to ambient are formulated in the same way as for flat-plate collectors.

If the still has insulation under the basin, heat loss to the ground can be written as

where UG is an overall loss coefficient to ground assuming the ground to be at a temperature equal to ambient. This term should be small in a large, well-designed still.

The instantaneous efficiency of a still at any time is defined as the ratio of the heat transfer in the still by evaporationcondensation to the radiation on the still:

This is usually integrated over some extended period (e.g., day or month) to indicate long-term performance. Efficiency from experimental measurements is

where mp is the rate at which distillate is produced from the still (which may be less than mD) and hfg is the latent heat of vaporization.