Performance assessment of conventional solar desalination system in Northern part of Gujarat

Water distillation by utilising free energy from the sun is one of the significant techniques for getting freshwater from salty and seawater. For the remote areas and small societies where freshwater is distant, solar distillation is one of the best explanations for freshwater creation. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of the flat plate collector-assisted conventional solar still incorporating mirror wall and heat storage material, which was tested at Anchor institute of solar energy studies, Mehsana (23.5275311° latitude and 72.3881041° longitude), Gujarat. Moreover, the study captures average productivity with and without FPC which was 1.5 L and 1.0 L respectively during the day time for the entire period of experiments. In this study, the water depth is varied from 1 to 5 cm inside the single basin solar still to obtain the optimum depth. It was observed that when mirror augmented still was operated with the FPC, 3.6L/day productivity was achieved with 30% instantaneous efficiency, at solar radiation of 1122 W/m² and ambient temperature of 24 °C. Also, the maximum productivity was observed at a water depth of 3 cm and 4 cm. Moreover, improvements in daily and yearly productivity were observed to be 51.515% and 56.6474% respectively, which were estimated on the basis of with and without FPC. An experiment was performed at Anchor Institute of Solar Energy, Mehsana located at the north part of Gujarat where the average annual rain was comparatively less compared to other regions, so this type of solar still can provide potable water to daily workers who work on site. Furthermore, economic study reveals 0.577 INR/litre cost of distiller output for conventional set-up and 0.477 INR/litre for the FPC assisted set-up.