Experimental Investigation of some Design and Operating Parameters of Basin Type Solar Still

This paper presents the experimental work conducted on Conventional Basin type Solar Still in order to investigate the effect of some design and operating parameters on the performance of the still. The vapour leakage from the still may significantly vary the performance, lot of literature can be found on this topic. The misalignment or crookedness of distillate channel may be seemingly ignorable, but has significant effect on the distillate output, this aspect has been investigated in this work. So far no reasonable work has been done on this aspect. The effect of still wall inner lining colour, which is normally black or white, has also been studied. The condensed distillate droplets on the glass cover cause the scattering and reflection of the incident solar radiation on the still and thus reduce the total incident energy on the still basin. This aspect has also not been experimentally or theoretically investigated significantly by the researchers so far. The experimental study on this aspect is also presented in this paper. It was observed that the solar still with black inner wall and basin lining was operating at higher basin water, glass cover and inside air temperatures as compared to that with white inner wall lining and black basin lining. Around 10% more distillate output was obtained in black lined still. The effect of the crookedness of the distillate channel was found to be quite significant. A small 5 upward bend in the mid length of the channel gave a decrease in distillate yield by around 22% in case of black lined still while around 15% lower yield was obtained in white lined still. Due to the scattering of incident solar radiation caused by the condensed distillate droplets on the glass cover nearly 9% lesser distillate output was obtained as compared to the condition of clear glass cover. Keywords— condensate, scattering, crooked distillate channel, distillate droplets, glass cover, re-evaporation, wall inner lining.