Experimental Analysis of a Solar Still Coupled with Heat Pipe, Evacuated Tubes and Compound Parabolic Concentrators

Rural enclosures usually present themselves with poor access to clean and practicable water, despite this drawback, they still do receive a generous amount of sunlight. This sunlight can be used to purify the water. In this work, a pyramid type solar still is built and is coupled with heat pipe placed inside the evacuated tubes. To increase the area of solar energy collection compound parabolic concentrators (CPC) are used. To increase the solar radiation absorption, coating is done on the inner side of the basin and black stones are placed inside the basin. Using tap water as feed, the performance analysis is analyzed under three modes of operation, (i) Still alone, (ii) Still with heat-pipe and evacuated tubes and (iii) Still with Heat-pipe, evacuated tubes and Compound Parabolic Concentrators. The overall thermal efficiencies for the three above mentioned modes of operations are observed to be 23.14%, 23.48% and 23.87% respectively. The salt content is reduced by 98.3%. (paper)