Pramod Kumar

The need for freshwater grows by the day, yet the amount of freshwater accessible worldwide is insufficient to fulfil it. The distillation of saltwater could be a way to meet the demand for freshwater. The current study investigates the experimental performance enhancement of a tubular solar still (TSS) with various rotating wick materials. A rotating drum consisting of multiple wick materials (black bamboo cotton fabric, jute cloth, terry cotton, and polyester) was placed within the tube to increase the evaporation rate. The basin water depth was set at 2 cm to increase the productivity of distillate water. The black bamboo cotton fabric wick outperformed the jute cloth wick, terry cotton wick, polyester wick, and conventional tubular solar still (CTSS) by 5.7%, 12.44%, 19.94%, and 48%, respectively, while maintaining the wicked drum speed around 1 rpm. Because of its moisture-wicking nature, the efficiency of a TSS with a rotating wick made of black bamboo cotton fabric is 50.65% greater than that of a CTSS. Compared with other wick materials, it had a high absorption and evaporation rate. Furthermore, the performance of TSS was investigated, using a black bamboo cotton fabric wicked drum at 0.3, 0.5, 1, 2, and 3 rpm. The studies indicated that a wicked drum speed of 0.5 rpm improves the productivity of approximately 7.474 kg/m2. Furthermore, the average TSS efficiency was increased by 70.8% compared with the CTSS.

This experimentation deals with the comparative study of a flat plate wick-based solar water distillation system (SWDS) with and without V-trough (VT) solar collector (SC) under the actual environmental conditions of Salem, Tamilnadu, India, as an attempt to enhance the productivity of the solar water distillation system. The influences of wick material, solar intensity, flow rate, and ambient temperature on productivity are also proposed. To ensure accuracy in the experimentation, the overall observation is divided into four spells with four different wick materials. The hourly productivity of the proposed still is compared with the standard theoretical equation, and the deviation between them is well accepted with ±10.14%. The maximum convective and evaporative heat transfer coefficients are observed during spell 3 as 2.488 W/m2K and 25.321 W/m2K, respectively. The prediction of Nusselt number and Sherwood number are also proposed to validate the heat transfer and mass transfer, respectively. Compared to polyester, terry cotton, and jute wick materials, fur fabric wick yielded maximum productivity of 4.40 l/day and 6.29 l/day for SWDS alone and SWDS with VT, respectively. The results revealed that the productivity of the SWDS coupled with V-trough SC is 30.12% greater than SWDS alone.