Enhancement of solar still by reticular porous media: Experimental investigation with exergy and economic analysis

In this paper, an experimental study with the exergy analysis are performed to investigate the application of a reticular porous insert in a single slope solar still for performance improvement. Two single slope solar stills containing conventional and modified by inserting a reticular porous layer are fabricated and experimented together. Two stills have the same dimensions. The porous insert was made up by black sponge rubber. All tests were taken in Semnan with geographical coordinates of 35 degrees 33'N, 53 degrees 23'E, Iran. Hourly water and glass temperatures, productivity, and efficiency of two stills are measured and evaluated experimentally. Moreover, the exergy efficiencies of the solar stills are obtained and presented. Finally, a cost analysis is performed to investigate the modified still economically. It was concluded that the daily total water productions for one day of the experiment are 3263 and 3829 cc/m(2) for the conventional and modified stills, respectively. Accordingly, the modified still produces about 17.35% more distilled water in comparison to the conventional one during one day. Finally, the costs per liter per square meter for the modified and conventional stills are 0.0095 and 0.0108 $/L/m(2), respectively. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.