Study of thermo physical properties and an improvement in production of distillate yield in pyramid solar still with boosting mirror

T  Arunkumar; R  Jayaprakash; A  Prakash; P U Suneesh; M  Karthik  and Sanjay Kumar

doi:10.17485/ijst/2010/v3i8.22

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Study of thermo physical properties and an improvement in production of distillate yield in pyramid solar still with boosting mirror

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Indian Journal of Science and Technology

DOI: 10.17485/ijst/2010/v3i8.22

Year: 2010, Volume: 3, Issue: 8, Pages: 879-884

Original Article

Study of thermo physical properties and an improvement in production of distillate yield in pyramid solar still with boosting mirror

T. Arunkumar¹ , R. Jayaprakash², A. Prakash³ , P.U Suneesh⁴ , M. Karthik⁵ and Sanjay Kumar^6*

^1,2 Solar Energy Laboratory, Dept. of Physics, Sri Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya, College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore-641020, TN, India.
³ Dept. of Science and Humanities, RVS College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore, TN, India.
⁴ Dept. of Physics, M.E.S College of Engineering, Kerala-679573, India,
⁵ Dept. of Physics, Coimbatore Institute of Engineering and Information Technology, Coimbatore – 641109, TN, India.
⁶ Centre for Appropriate Management, Chandragupt Institute of Management, Chajubagh, Patna- 800 001, Bihar, India.
[email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

We report the experimental analysis of a pyramid solar still with boosting mirror system for increasing the distillate yield rate under clear climatic conditions in Coimbatore (11° N latitude), India. The radiation received by the still is boosted up by reflecting the solar radiation. A tracking system keeps track of incident radiation into the still. The area of the still is 0.25 m² . Water and ambient temperature are measured along with solar radiation and humidity at regular intervals of time. The inner and outer faces of the glass cover temperatures are also recorded. The average solar radiation received is 760.43 W/m² . The daily average efficiency of the still was found to be 15%. A 2.9 l/m² /d distillate yield is obtained with the help of the boosting mirror; whereas, 1.52 l/m² /day are collected without the boosting mirror. In this work an attempt has been made to study the effect of heat transfer within a pyramid solar still. The thermo physical properties of the still are analyzed for this study. Thermal conductivity dynamic viscosities of water are also studied for this system. The thermal conductivity is in the range of 26.77 x 10^-2 Wm^-2 C^-1 to 29.64 Wm^-2 C^-1. Dynamic viscosity ranges from 18.6 x 10^-6 Nsm^-2 to 20.2 x 10^-6 Nsm^-2.
Keywords: Solar energy, booster mirror, desalination, potable water.