EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF A SOLAR STILL USING LAURIC ACID AS A ENERGY STORAGE MEDIUM

The solar still is a simple device used for obtaining fresh water for small scale demand. Due to intermittent nature of solar energy, solar still s are not continuous in nature. To make them operative for non-sunshine hours energy storage mediums are used. In the present work an attempt has been made to utilize the energy storage capacity of Lauric acid to enhance the performance of solar still. Experiments were carried out on single basin double slope solar still in the premises of SHIATS, Allahabad in the month of February. It is observed that the nocturnal distillate output is increased by more than 17% when Lauric acid is used as energy storage medium.