EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION AND COMPARISON OF DESALINATION USING CONVENTIONAL SOLAR STILL, STEPPED-CUP SOLAR STILL WITH AND WITHOUT BIOMASS

Desalination of water has become one of the vital areas of research because of the increasing demand for fresh water. The usage of solar stills is one of the conventional methods for the process of desalination. In this paper, a novel design variation is given to the conventional solar still to increase the productivity of desalination. The plain basin plate of the conventional still is replaced with steps with cup shaped trays. Experiment has been done to measure the hourly desalinate productivity of both conventional solar still and the stepped-cup solar still in the month of May in Tamilnadu, India. Further, a biomass boiler is connected to the stepped-cup solar still to increase the heat inside the still. Productivity of the stepped-cup solar still with the biomass boiler set-up has been measured and compared with the productivity of conventional solar still. Results have shown that the proposed stepped-cup solar still design has increased the productivity by 12% compared to the conventional still. Also, the productivity of the stepped-cup solar still has shown an enormous 70% increase on the addition of the biomass when compared to the conventional solar still.