| Popis: |
The desalination process is important for converting seawater drinking water in many arid regions of the world. Solar stills are considered one of the best economical solutions to overcome the shortage of water despite of the limitations in its productivity. In this research two, similar solar stills were designed and fabricated and different absorbing materials were used to increase productivity and enhance the still’s performance. These materials are luffa, black luffa, fine steel wool and, steel wool pads and the performance of the two solar stills were evaluated at the same climate conditions. Different parameters were measured such as the still productivity, solar intensity, temperature, and wind velocity to calculate the still thermal efficiency and the exergoeconomic analysis. The results concluded that the still productivity was about 1.872, 2.923, 3.325, 3.712, and 4.384 l/m2 for conventional solar still (CSS), solar still with luffa (CSS-NLF), with black luffa (CSS-BLF), with fine steel wool (CSS-FSW) and with steel wool pads (CSS-SWP) respectively. The thermal efficiency ratings were roughly for the comparable values 17.13, 21.22, 24.71, 28.60 and 32.74% respectively. In addition, the cost per liter (CPL) for these solar stills was about 0.0082, 0.0058, 0.0049, 0.004,4 and 0.0034 $/l/m2 respectively. Finally the payback period and the exergoeconomic analysis were performed and evaluated for these modifications and the findings cleared that using steel wool pads showed a promising performance compared with the other modifications. |
