Effect of water depths on heat and mass transfer in a passive solar still: in summer climatic condition Original Research Article

In this communication, an attempt has been made to find out the effect of water depth on evaporative mass transfer coefficient for a passive single-slope distillation system in summer climatic condition. The experiments have been conducted on a south facing, single slope, solar still of 30° inclination of condensing cover, in summer climatic condition for 24 h on different five days for different five water depths from 0.04 m to 0.18 m. The objective of the present paper is to study the behavioral variation in internal heat transfer coefficients with respect to the water depth in the still. It is understood that the heat transfer coefficients depends significantly on water depths. It is also observed that the nocturnal distillation is significant in the case of higher water depths because of reduced ambient and stored energy within it.