Enhancement of solar water distillation process by surfactant additives

The presence of surfactant additives in water is found to enhance the boiling heat transfer significantly. The effect of using a surfactant as sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) in relatively small dosages of concentration with a small size unit of solar water distillation process is investigated. Sun simulator (electric heater and variac transformer) is used to quantify the same input power for each experiment for the system instead of the sun. The experimental results show that a small amount of surfactant additive makes the top brine temperature (TBT) considerably higher, hence the freshwater product. Temperature curves for various surfactant concentrations are obtained and compared. The percentage of the increase in the system productivity is 0.7%, 2.5%, 4.7% and 7% at additive concentration equal to 50, 100, 200 and 300 ppm respectively. It is found that increasing the surfactant concentration more than 300 ppm not affecting the system daily productivity (DP) and TBT. Using surfactant concentration more than 400 ppm will decrease the DP by 6%.