A thermo-economic study of tubular solar distillers with V-corrugated basin and reflective mirrors

The advantage of the tubular solar still is the large receiving and condensation area that characterizes the performance of the distiller. This study aims to achieve the maximum possible benefit from this advantage by utilizing the best effective modifications to achieve the highest freshwater productivity. This was done by hybrid use of a V-corrugated basin and reflective mirrors in the seawater basin of the tubular distillers. To illustrate the influences of dual uses of V-corrugated basin and reflective mirrors on tubular distiller's performance, the ex-perimentations were conducted on two sets of experiments. In the first set, both the tubular solar distiller with V -corrugated absorber (TSD-VCA) and conventional tubular solar distiller (CTSD) were designed and tested at the same conditions. In the second set, both the tubular solar distiller with a V-corrugated absorber and reflective mirrors (TSD-VCA&RM) and CTSD were designed and tested under the same conditions in Tanta city, Egypt. Also, the influences of basin seawater masses were studied. The results indicated that the dual use of V -corru-gated basin and reflective mirrors (TSD-VCA&RM) increases the accumulated productivity to 9.49 L/m2 day with 100.2 % improvement compared to CTSD. The highest achieved accumulative thermal and exergy efficiencies of TSD-VCA&RM are 80.25 and 15.26 %, with an improvement of 98.76 and 525.4 %, respectively, compared to CTSD. Furthermore, the economic feasibility illustrated that the dual use of V-corrugated basin and reflective mirrors are a very effective choice where it reduces the distillate water cost by 33.33 % compared to CTSD.

Automated summary

This study aims to maximize the freshwater productivity of tubular solar still by utilizing the hybrid use of V-corrugated basin and reflective mirrors. The results showed that the dual use of these modifications significantly increased the accumulated productivity, thermal efficiency, and exergy efficiency compared to conventional tubular solar distillers. The economic feasibility also demonstrated that this hybrid use effectively reduced the distillate water cost.