Second law thermodynamic study of solar assisted distillation system: A review

Solar energy is a clean source of energy and has been used widely for various applications. Exergy analysis, which discussed the grey areas of improvement in various application considers the entropy generations within the systems. Exergetic analysis has been widely used in the performance analysis and exergoeconomic analysis of renewable energy systems. The present study discusses the comprehensive review on exergetic analysis of solar assisted distillation systems with main focus on concentrated solar energy. For the same, general relations used for first law analysis, second law analysis, entropy generation and irreversibilities for each subcomponent is presented. Following this, the exergetic analysis work on Parabolic trough collectors (PTC), heat exchanger and distillation systems are reviewed comprehensively. The future direction for research work in the area of exergy analysis are identified and suitable conclusions are presented. It is expected that this comprehensive study will be beneficial to researchers involved in the second law analysis of solar based distillation systems.