OPTIMIZATION OF PERFORMANCE OF A WATER DISTILLATION SYSTEM IN AN INDOOR SIMULATION

The present work focuses on the application of Taguchi technique to investigate the effect of bath temperature, water depth and inclination angle of the condensing on the performance of the single slope solar stills. An indoor simulation model was developed using constant temperature water bath to maintain water temperatures at steady state for the purpose of experiment. The condensing covers inclined at 20º, 30º and 40º were fabricated of commonly used glass sheet to form top inclined cover and GRP sheets to make the side walls of the cover. Orthogonal arrays of Taguchi, the Signal?to-Noise (S/N) ratio, the analysis of variance (ANOVA), and regression analysis have been employed to analyze the effect of the factors on the response. Linear regression equation has been developed with an objective to establish a correlation between the selected parameters and the Productivity. The predicted values of distilled water have been compared with experimental data and are found to be in good agreement. Inclination angle of condensing cover is found to be the most significant factor contributing towards the productivity for Evaporating Heat Transfer Coefficient and Convective Heat Transfer Coefficient