Effect of Temperature Dependent Internal Heat Transfers on the Performance of a Solar Still

Abstract

In this paper, an effect of the temperature dependence of internal heat transfer coefficients on the performance of a single basin solar still has been studied by incorporating the change of water mass in the basin with time, initial basin water temperature etc. On the basis of numerical calculations based on simple transient analysis, the following conclusions have been drawn:

i) the evaporative heat transfer coefficient is a strong function of brine temperature, and

ii) the change of brine mass with time has insignificant effect on the performance of the still in nocturnal production which is in accordance with the assumption made by Malik and Tran (1973). This is true for other cases also.

These have also been validated by experimental results.

KEY WORDS:

• Solar distillation
• Solar still
• Nocturnal production