Energy and exergy analysis of flat plate solar collector-assisted active solar distillation system

Due to the fast increase in the world population, the need for the energy and water increases rapidly. Various studies have been made to meet this extra energy and water demand. Most of these studies have focused on solar energy and solar driven desalination systems. Solar water desalination is a well-known and proven technique which has been used for a long time at remote areas and places suffering from shortage of potable quality water. In this study, a flat plate solar collector-assisted water distillation system was designed and tested under actual conditions and its energy and exergy efficiencies were analyzed, which is the main contribution of this study to the literature related to solar desalination systems. The system works under closed cycle in order to prevent efficiency losses caused by internal fouling in both solar collector and distillation unit. The maximum daily energy efficiency of the system was obtained as 48.1% and the maximum exergy efficiency was found as 2.76% for optimum flow rate values.