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Novel concept on the enhancement of conventional solar still performance via constant heat rate supply to the saline water

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Abstract

One of most reduction reasons of simple conventional solar still productivity is the coupling between high solar intensity and the high ambient temperature in the same time. The high intensity increases the saline water temperature, while the outside temperature increases the glass temperature, and consequently reduction in saline water and glass temperature difference leads to reduction in condensation and productivity. The present theoretical study focuses on the completion of the absorbed solar energy in the basin to be constant during the day. The basin water will be in high temperature level all day especially at the time of low outside temperature far away the noon. The absorbed heat in the basin is held constant at αw Imax by extra heat from wind turbine power with battery storage system all day hours. The results show that the solar still productivity with constant heat supply is more than that with same amount of variable energy during sun rise time only (6 AM to 6 PM) by 69.133%. So, constant absorbed heat in the water basin (αw Imax) through the 24 h of the day enhances the performance with productivity up to 248% with the hybrid solar and electric power consumption of the wind turbine power. The water in the basin is held constant at 2 cm via makeup water to compensate the evaporation rate.

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Abbreviations

A :

Area, m2

a :

Wire cross-sectional area, mm2

Cp :

Specific heat, J kg−1 °C−1

C.O.P:

Coefficient of performance

F:

Radiation shape factor

h bw :

Heat transfer coefficient in the saline water, W m−2 °C−1

h ca :

Outside air heat transfer coefficient, W m−2 °C−1

h cw :

Trapped air heat transfer coefficient in the still, W m−2 °C−1

h fg :

Evaporation heat load (latent heat) at atmospheric pressure, J kg−1

I :

Solar radiation, W m−2

i:

Electric current, ampere

L :

Wire length, m

m :

Mass, kg

m p :

Daily productivity, kg s−1

m re :

Instantaneous productivity, kg s−1

p :

Water vapor pressure, N m−2

R :

Resistance, Ω

t :

Temperature, °C

V :

Volt

U :

Heat transfer coefficient from basin and sides to ambient, W m−2 °C−1

W a :

Wind speed, m s−1

α :

Absorptive factor

ε :

Emissivity

τ :

Time, s

σ :

Stefan-Boltzmann constant, W m−2 K−4

a :

Ambient

b :

Basin

g :

Glass

sky :

Sky

w :

Water in basin

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mechanical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt

    Wael M. El-Maghlany & Mohamed ElHelw

  2. Mechanical Engineering Department, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, Alexandria, Egypt

    Enass Massoud

Authors
  1. Wael M. El-Maghlany
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  2. Enass Massoud
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  3. Mohamed ElHelw
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Contributions

Wael M. El-Maghlany: Conceptualization, methodology, and results discussion

Enass Massoud and Mohamed ElHelw: Results discussion and paper writing

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Correspondence to Wael M. El-Maghlany.

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Appendix

Appendix

The control of the power in order to mimic the exact power requirement curve against time given in Fig. 7 above is performed using pulse width modulation (PWM) driving a step-down buck converter (chopper) MOSFET transistor. The curve above is stored in the memory of the microcontroller responsible for the PWM in the form of an array of 128 elements (from 0 to 127). In this case, the curve is subdivided into 128 points corresponding to the time, and the corresponding ordinate values are stored in the 128 elements of the array. The time interval between each two consecutive samples is 11 min and 15 s. This array is presented in Table 4; the values stored in memory (third column of the array) will constitute the reference signal for the PWM operation.

Table 4 Sampled data array of the required power
Full size table
Fig. 11
figure 11

Microcontroller system block diagram

The DC chopper power circuit of the MOSFET (including the MOSFET, driver circuit, and heating resistor) is shown in Fig. 12, where the MOSFET is represented by a switch CH. The freewheeling diode (FD) is used in order to remove the effect of any stray and/or wiring inductances, which would damage the switching circuit. The heating element is represented here by a resistance (R). The output voltage and currents are pulse width modulated signals. The average of the product of these two signals represents the required power from Fig. 7. This power will follow the curve desired according to the time of the day as mandated by the heating requirements of the overall system.

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Fig. 12
figure 12

Power circuit of the MSOFET and heating resistor

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El-Maghlany, W.M., Massoud, E. & ElHelw, M. Novel concept on the enhancement of conventional solar still performance via constant heat rate supply to the saline water. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 39458–39470 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13610-5

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