The Performance Investigation on a Solar Still Distillation System Combined with PV-DC Heater System

Water scarcity and pollution pose critical situation in all walks of life especially in the developing countries. Among the available purification technologies, solar distillation process proves to be a suitable solution for resolving this existing crisis. This renewable energy technology operates on a basic principle of which the solar radiation enters through the glass surface inside a closed chamber touching the black surface generating heat energy, which gets trapped inside. This gradually raises the temperature of the liquid resulting in evaporation process and further condensation, which is drained out for use. However, the distilled water produced by the solar still system is very limited. Hence, this paper presents the experimental results of the performance of the solar still system using the combination of PV-DC heater. This experiment will be conducted in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) solar field testing facility. The weather forecast and solar radiation intensity data will be obtained from Ipoh Meteorogical Department for the experiment. The parameters of the basin size, cover material and water depth are fixed. Generally, 3 types of experiments will be conducted;
 Active solar still system combined with PV-DC heater
 Passive solar still system with black painted basin
 Conventional passive solar still
From this experiment, data of the water basin temperature, inner glass cover temperature, and ambient temperature will be collected and tabulated hourly. Theoretically, the more temperature differences between the water basin temperature and inner glass temperature, the more evaporation rate will be produced.