Performance Improvement of Solar Stills via Experimental Investigation

There is always a need to increase a distillate output of Solar still. The distillate output of solar stills is expected to increase by applying plates inside solar stills. Hence, an experimental study is conducted to investigate the improvement distillate output of basin solar stills by increasing the effective surface area with the help of different plates. For this purpose, three solar stills are developed by locally available materials. The first solar still is a conventional type, the second is made of Aluminium plate while the third one is made of Galvenized Iron plate. Performance of solar stills having aluminium plate and Galvenized iron plate is tested and compared with conventional solar still under the same climate conditions of Mehsana, Gujarat. The three solar stills are tested at two different situations: still at the same water depth (40 mm) and stills having the same quantity of brackish water (30 L & 40 L). Results indicate that, distillate output of solar still having aluminium plate is higher than conventional solar still and solar still having Galvenized iron plate. Moreover, it is found that the average distillate output of water increases up to 45 % and 15 % of conventional solar still with respect to solar stills having aluminium plate and Galvenized iron plate respectively.