Stand alone triple basin solar desalination system with cover cooling and parabolic dish concentrator

• A triple basin glass solar still is fabricated and tested.
• Effect of parabolic dish concentrator and cover cooling is investigated.
• Photovoltaic panel is used to operate the cover cooling system.
• Maximum distillate of 16.94 kg/m2.day is obtained in integrated TBSS system.

A stand-alone triple basin solar desalination system is experimentally tested and the results are discussed in this paper. This system mainly consists of a triple basin glass solar still (TBSS), cover cooling (CC) arrangement, parabolic dish concentrator (PDC) and photovoltaic (PV) panel. Four triangular hollow fins are attached at the bottom of the upper and middle basin in order to increase the heat transfer rate and place the energy storing materials. The performance of the system is studied by, conventional TBSS system, integrating the TBSS with CC, TBSS with PDC, and TBSS with CC and PDC. Also, each configuration is tested further by using fins without energy storing material, fins filled with river sand, and fins filled with charcoal. The results of the test reveal that, TBSS with charcoal and TBSS with river sand enhance the distillate by 34.2 and 25.6% higher than conventional TBSS distillates. TBSS with cover cooling reduces the glass temperature to about 8 °C compared to the conventional TBSS. The presence of concentrator increases the lower basin water temperature upto 85 °C. The maximum distillate yield of 16.94 kg/m2.day is obtained for TBSS with concentrator, cover cooling and charcoal in fins.

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