Performance Improvement of Double Slope Solar Still Using Heat Absorbing Materials

Today demand of fresh water is increasing continuously because of the industrial development, intensified agriculture, improvement of standard of human life style, increase of the world population etc.With increasing industrialization and population, there is need to reduce the load of fossil fuels to reduce the environmental pollution. Unlike conventional energy utilization, solar energy is free of cost and has good availability in our country. Water is one of the necessities for all the creatures on earth to live; hence its purification is equally important. Solar distillation is one of the methods in which water purification can be done using solar energy. The present work focuses on fabricating a model of double slope solar still which will distill water using solar energy. In the study, a solar distillation having double slope single basin is studied theoretically and experimentally at A.D. Patel Institute of Technology, New V.V. Nagar (Gujarat). The still was constructed using a 1m x 1m base area with the glass cover of still inclined at 350. Temperatures of glass cover, water inside the still, ambient air were recorded and the amount of distilled water was measured at the interval of one hour. To obtain more quantity of distilled water, Study on the effect of various heat absorbing materials on the performance of the solar still shows that the output of solar still using black dye as a heat absorbing material is 26.7% higher than that without use of absorbing materials.