Evaluation of Polythene Film Cover Double-Slope Solar Still with Different Materials on Distill Water Production.

Water is crucial for human to continue life. But, in many part of the world, fresh water resources are unreachable or unavailable to people especially those lives in rural area. This problem become more serious when the industry in worldwide is growth rapidly and increased the demand for fresh water supply. For the solution, some engineers and researcher come up with desalination plants to produced potable water from saline or brackish water. However, the operational and maintenance cost are high and energy used are non-renewable sources which the rate are increase by the time. Instead of desalination, the solar distillation is an alternative to overcome this problem. Solar distillation is environmentally safe, economically in cost and uses solar radiation to evaporate saline or brackish water to potable water. The aim of this project is to investigate the effect of several variables in production rate of potable water. The design of this project is double-sloped solar still with polythene film cover. The variables are the type of basin’s material; black paint and black soil, with lake water basin as control. The experiment is conducted for three days and the distillate are collected for every 30 minutes from 0800 hours till 1800 hours daily. For the results, the solar still with black paint basin produced the highest volume of distill water which is 701 ml. The volume of distillate produced from solar still with black soil basin and conventional basin are 546 ml and 374 ml respectively.
Further research need to done so that the solar still can perform better to serve human better.