A comparative study of hemispherical solar stills with various modifications to obtain modified and inexpensive still models

Mohammed El Hadi Attia; Abd Elnaby Kabeel; Mohamed Abdelgaied; Gamal B Abdelaziz

doi:10.1007/s11356-021-14862-x

A comparative study of hemispherical solar stills with various modifications to obtain modified and inexpensive still models

Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2021 Oct;28(39):55667-55677. doi: 10.1007/s11356-021-14862-x. Epub 2021 Jun 17.

Authors

Mohammed El Hadi Attia¹, Abd Elnaby Kabeel^{2

3}, Mohamed Abdelgaied⁴, Gamal B Abdelaziz⁵

Affiliations

¹ Physics Department, Faculty of Exact Sciences, University of El Oued, 3900, El Oued, Algeria.
² Mechanical Power Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Tanta University, Tanta, Egypt. kabeel6@f-eng.tanta.edu.eg.
³ Faculty of Engineering, Delta University for Science and Technology, Gamasa, Egypt. kabeel6@f-eng.tanta.edu.eg.
⁴ Mechanical Power Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Tanta University, Tanta, Egypt.
⁵ Mechanical Department, Faculty of Technology and Education, Suez University, Suez, Egypt.

PMID: 34138429
DOI: 10.1007/s11356-021-14862-x

Abstract

The present study aims to obtain the best modification of the hemispherical solar distillers that achieves the highest productivity with the lower inexpensive. To achieve this goal, this paper dealt with conducting a comparative study, operating performance analysis and an economic study of two different modifications, and comparing them with the reference distiller in order to obtain the best adjustments that achieve the highest productivity at the lowest cost. In the first modification, CuO nanoparticles with three different concentrations (0.1, 0.2, and 0.3%) were added to the basin water, to increase the intensity of absorbed solar energy, improve the thermal properties of basin fluid, and then increase the rate of vapor generation inside the distillation basin. In the second modification, water film glass cooling technology with three different flow rates (1.5, 2, and 2.5 L/h) was utilized to increase the water vapor condensation rate. In this experimental study, three hemispherical distillers were fabricated and tested under the same climate conditions at a 1-cm basin fluid depth, namely, conventional hemispherical solar still (CHSS), hemispherical solar still with glass cover cooling (HSS-C), and hemispherical solar still with CuO-water-based nanofluid (HSS-N). The experimental results presented that the average daily accumulative yield of CHSS is 3.85 L/m²/day, while the daily accumulative yield of HSS-N increases to 5.75, 6.40, and 6.80 L/m²/day with improvement 49.3, 66.2, and 76.6% at volume fraction 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3%, respectively. Also, the daily accumulative yield of HSS-C increases to 4.9, 5.35, and 5.7 L/m²/day with improvements of 27.3, 39, and 48% at water film flow rates of 1.5, 2, and 2.5 L/h, respectively. The cost of distilled water produced from CHSS is 0.0106 $/L, while the utilization of HSS-C (2.5 L/h) and HSS-N (0.3%) reduces the cost of distilled water to 0.0072 and 0.0066 $/L, respectively. Based on accumulative yield and economic analyzes, it is recommended that the modified HSS-N (0.3% volume fraction) be utilized to achieve the highest accumulative yield and the lowest price of the produced distilled water.

Keywords: Cost; CuO-water nanofluid; Glass cover cooling; Hemispherical solar distillers; Productivity.