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ABSTRACT
The main focus of this review is to investigate the potential of small-scale solar desalination as a viable freshwater source by comparing the performance of different types of modification on solar stills. The design factors that could provide impacts to the parameters affecting the performance in terms of distillate production have been considered. The design factors include mostly the different mechanisms of solar stills, concentration of solar power,sand thermal storage. The impacted parameters of each type of solar stills are one of the highlights of this review. The cost of production has also been explored. The purpose of this review is to enable future researchers in identifying the appropriate features to be used for designing a solar desalination system in water and energy-stressed rural regions. The minimum cost per liter of water production reported was 0.0085 USD and the maximum production reported from modified passive solar still was reported to be 11.65 L/m2/day with a spherical absorber. Minor addition of active elements like a small pump to the still with Fresnel absorber reported producing 12.47 L/m2 day. For performance enhancement of passive solar stills in water and energy scarce regions, it is suggested to add Phase change material (PCM) with heat conductive particles and solar irradiation concentration through absorbers/reflectors or Fresnel lenses.
HIGHLIGHTS
Renewable energy based desalination methods are preferable over energy-intensive methods.
For water and energy scarce regions, independent small scale passive solar stills can be a viable option.
Parameters affecting the performance of a solar still include uncontrollable climatic parameters and manipulative parameters.
Highly productive passive solar stills can be designed by controlling the manipulative parameters like evaporation area of the basin, tilt angle and temperature of condensation surface, thermal gain of the feedwater by thermal storage, heat transfer using fins/conductive material in the basin.
The recent trends to improve passive solar stills’ efficiency with cost effectiveness include usage of sunlight concentrators through refraction, addition of conductive nano particles with thermal storage and multi-staging.
GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Acknowledgements
The authors are also grateful to Lee Kong Chian Faculty of Engineering and Science, UTAR for providing sufficient facilities.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
This article is categorized as a review article. The necessary information has been obtained mostly from relevant published journal articles from different sources. Most of the reviewed papers have been downloaded from the reputable high ranked journal websites through the University’s subscription. For all the figures used in the article, the permission has been obtained from Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink® service. No new data has been generated in this study. The reviewed papers are listed in references section and any necessary information or data can be extracted from those published articles upon full accesss.
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Notes on contributors
Zhi Yong Ho
Zhi Yong Ho is a candidate of Master in Engineering Science in Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia. He received the Bachelor's Degree (Mechanical Engineer) from Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman in 2018. Currently, he serves as a Research Assistant under the supervision of Dr. Rubina Bahar since 2019 and has been a member of Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) the entire time. His research mainly focuses on passive solar desalination. His recent research is the enhancement on solar still with the use of concentrated solar power and thermal storage. With the fundamental of the research, Ho had participated and obtained the first prize in Global Engineering Design Solution Challenge organized by IMechE (UK) with his team in 2019.
Rubina Bahar
Dr. Rubina Bahar (CEng, MIMechE) obtained her PhD and MEng (Mechanical) from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2011 and 2006 respectively. Her major areas of research are Sustainable Energy and Water. She has been exploring the major processes of Desalination technology using thermal and membrane processes for the past 15 years and still developing energy efficient water purification processes associated with Solar Energy. Recently her research project has been awarded as the winner for Global Engineering Design Solution Challenge by Institution of Mechanical Engineers UK. Dr. Rubina Bahar is currently working at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) Malaysia in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering as an Assistant Professor.
Chai Hoon Koo
Dr. Chai Hoon Koo is currently an Associate Professor and the Secretary of Center of Disaster Risk Reduction (CDRR) in Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) of Kuala Lumpur campus. She received her B.Eng (Civil Engineering) and M.Eng (Environmental) from the Technological University of Malaysia (UTM). Koo earned her PhD in engineering from the National University of Malaysia (UKM). Her research interests include water quality and recycling, membrane filtration, drought forecasting and management, potential evapotranspiration estimation and artificial intelligence (AI) modelling. Koo is currently administrating CDRR, UTAR and supervising 5 PhD and 5 master students dissertation projects. Her research group has secured more than RM500,000 of research funding for numerous projects relating to wastewater treatment, membrane technology, hydrological modelling using AI approach. To date, she has published more than 50 research articles in journals and conference proceedings on separation process and AI modelling. Apart from her research achievement, she has been appointed as the Lead Guest Editor for a special issue (Dec 2018) of Journal of Applied Membrane Science and Technology (JAMST). Besides, she has been invited to contribute as Technical Committee (TC) and designated reviewer for more than 10 international conferences, workshops and journal publishers. Following to that, she devoted herself to academic community by serving as international journal editorial board members in Sriwijaya Journal of Environment (SJE), Indonesian Journal of Environmental Management & Sustainability (IJEMS) and Separation Technologies for Frontiers Environmental Chemistry. Aside of her academic involvement, she is also a professional engineer registered with Board of Engineers Malaysia.