Performance Analysis of Solar Still for Potable Water Under Different Pressure Conditions

Abstract

The present work is an outlook to enhance the productivity of a basin type double slope Solar Still with variant pressure. In India three fourth of its rural population is not having access to piped and clean drinking water and the scenario is not much different even in metropolitan cities. Only in Hyderabad, government spent 1450 crores as drinking water project and also provided 20 kiloliter per month to its consumers. The need of drinking water availability is rising and becoming too expensive. Various filtration techniques are available in the market. Solar desalination proves to be one of the most sustainable filtration techniques. The current work deals with the fabrication and experimentation of double slope solar still of 2m² aperture area for portable drinking water. The composition of the water to be desalinate is not the sewage water but the normal ground water having a TDS level of more than 500PPM. The material for the basin is taken to be Fibre Reinforced Plastic (FRP) for ease in manufacturing and capability to attach to acrylic sheet for transparent walls from south east and west. The basin absorber is metallic sheet of 20 gauge. . The finding is indicate that the transparent sheet used as the walls of the still leads to higher yield and thus can further be increased if different pressure levels of 0.5 to 0.75 atm be applied.