EFFECT OF DESIGN AND CLIMATIC PARAMETERS ON PERFORMANCE OF DOMESTIC TYPE INTEGRATE D SINGLE SLOPE SOLAR STILL ? AN EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION

The work was motivated by the increasing awareness of the need for enhancing water supplies schemes in arid lands featuring an appropriate technology for solar energy use in the desalination field in India. The conventional desalination technologies like multi stage flash, multiple effect, vapor compression, iron exchange, reverse osmosis, electro dialysis are expensive for the production of small amount of fresh water, also use of conventional energy sources has a negative impact on the environment. Solar distillation represents a most attractive and simple t echnique among other distillation processes, and it is especially suited to small - scale units at locations where solar energy is considerable. The present work is related to effect of design and climatic parameters on performance of domestic type integrate d single slope solar still with and without flat plat collector with 6, 9, 12 cm water depth. From the present experimental study it has been concluded that water depth, inclination of glass cover gives significant effect on yield of single slope solar sti ll. Experiments of still with flat plate collector have also been performed and it has been noticed that there is considerable effect of flat plate collector on the performance of still. Though solar still have not been successfully commercialized as yet, with the ongoing research efforts, they can be modified and improved for future domestic applications.