Experimental Investigations on Performance Evaluation of a Single Basin Solar Still Using Different Energy Absorbing Materials

Energy and water are necessity of mankind that influences the development of any nation. Today, the production of fresh drinking water is a serious problem. Fresh water resources are becoming scarce due to population growth and pollution caused by industrial waste. Drinking water shortage is expected to become one of the biggest problems faced by world. With the continuous increase in the energy shortage and environmental pollution to reduce the mismatch between energy supply and energy demand, solar energy is one of the technologies which could be used as an alternative to the fossil fuel energy. Solar energy technologies are rapidly growing industries because it is one of the most reliable and readily available energy sources in the world. In most cases, the direct use of sea water is not possible because it is made up of different types of salts. Distillation is a well known thermal process for water purification and most importantly water desalination. Most of the conventional water distillation processes are highly energy consuming and require fossil fuels as well as electric power for their operation. Solar energy can be used to produce fresh water directly in a solar still or indirectly where the thermal energy from a solar energy system is supplied to solar still. One way to improve the energy utilization is to store the energy during sunshine times of higher solar incidence for later use of necessary needs. Efficient storage technologies are required to store energy for twenty four hours cycles to meet energy demand. Energy storage would enable to power generation for night periods and it helps match the generation and demand peaks. Thermal energy storage (TES) involves the reversible change of enthalpy of a storage material. It is especially thermodynamically attractive and economically promising technology. Sensible heat storage is associated with the temperature increase of the storage medium. A number of efforts have been made to develop and improve the performance of solar desalination systems. Present work is focused on potassium dichromate (K2Cr2O7), Magnesium Sulphate Hepta Hydrate (MgSO4 7H2O) and sodium acetate (CH3COONa) phase change materials are energy absorbing materials. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.