article · Alexandria Engineering Journal
Experimental work examined the performance of a rotating discs solar still using various disc designs, a thermal energy storage unit, and external reflectors. Four rotating discs mounted on the back and side walls rotated at 0.1 revolutions per minute to expand both the water evaporation surface area and solar exposure. Among flat, corrugated, and finned disc geometries, finned discs produced the highest gains, boosting freshwater output by 106 percent over a conventional solar still. Incorporating a thermal energy storage unit composed of paraffin wax blended with copper oxide nanoparticles and emerging fins increased output by 149 percent. Adding external reflectors pushed output to 184 percent above conventional levels, achieving a thermal efficiency of 51.3 percent. This combined setup lowered the estimated production cost of fresh water from 0.024 dollars to 0.014 dollars per litre.
Solar stills offer a low-energy method for producing drinking water, yet conventional designs suffer from limited daily output. Demonstrating that rotating finned discs, phase-change materials, and simple external reflectors can substantially boost evaporation and thermal efficiency provides a pathway to more cost-effective solar desalination. Crucially, lowering freshwater production costs makes decentralised, solar-powered water purification far more viable for water-stressed areas.
This design is an applied and experimentally tested technology for decentralised freshwater generation. It could serve off-grid communities, small agricultural operations, or emergency relief providers seeking affordable, low-tech water purification. While the physical prototypes show a clear operational cost advantage, reaching commercial deployment would require further engineering to evaluate long-term durability, maintenance of the rotating components, and fabrication costs at scale.
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In this study, new rotating discs solar still (SS) has been investigated with different discs’ configurations, thermal energy storage unit (TESU) and employing external reflectors. Three shapes of rotating discs (flat, finned and corrugated) have been studied at constant rotational speed of 0.1 rpm. Four rotating discs are used on the back and side walls of the discs SS to increase the evaporation surface area of water and the exposed area to solar energy. The results showed that finned discs are the best for SS performance when compared with flat and corrugated discs. The improvement in productivity is 68%, 86% and 106% over the conventional SS for flat, corrugated and finned discs SS (FDSS), respectively. When employing TESU (Paraffin wax mixed with CuO nanoparticles) with emerging fins, the FDSS productivity showed 149% increase in productivity over the conventional SS. For further enhancement in FDSS productivity, external reflectors are utilized, where the productivity of FDSS with TESU and reflectors showed 184% productivity rise over the conventional SS. The thermal efficiency of the flat discs SS, corrugated discs SS, FDSS, FDSS-TESU and FDSS-TESU-reflectors is 44.5, 47, 50, 56.5 and 51.3%, respectively. The estimated costs per liter of produced freshwater from conventional SS and FDSS-TESU-reflectors are 0.024 and 0.014 $, respectively.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.aej.2022.01.001
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