Experimental study on improving the performance of solar still using air blower

ABSTRACT

Water is a basic necessity of man. Economical and efficient production or recycling of water is very much needed in today's world. Solar still has emerged as a life-saving technology to distil brackish water and produce drinkable water using solar energy. The aim of this project was to improve the performance of solar still by adding an air blower which creates a bubbling effect in the still due to which the evaporation rate increases. The bubbling effect using the blower makes the raw water to circulate and to distribute heat energy equally. The evaporated raw water was collected in the glass plate as drop particles. The drop condenses due to ambient air and finally distillate output is collected in the jar, which is placed outside the still. The solar still with air blower arrangement gave higher difference in efficiency and higher distilled output when compared with solar still without an air blower.

KEYWORDS:

• Solar energy
• solar still
• ambient air
• radiation
• distillation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Nivin Joy http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5946-8826

Alphonsa Antony http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0821-4690

A. Anderson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3386-2355