Performance Analysis of Flat and Rippled Wick-Inverted V-Type Solar Still Integrated with Drip System in Kerala Climatic Conditions

Thermal aspect of solar energy is widely used in the desalination plants. Experimental investigation and mathematical modeling of inverted V-type solar still integrated with drip system are presented in this paper. The experiment is performed in the Kerala climatic conditions (10.8439°N, 76.0328°E), March 2012 at M E S College of Engineering, Kuttippuram. A two segment still of 2？m2 is constructed. Experimental investigations on productivity and internal heat transfer are analyzed. The results indicate that the mean standard deviations between theoretical and experimental values are less than 7% (temperature of rippled wick), 8% (temperature of glass in rippled system), 11% (temperature of flat wick), and 7% (temperature of glass in flat system), an average for the working hours of the day. 1. Introduction Wick-type solar stills are widely accepted and are known for high distillate yield. Velmurugan et al. [1] have studied that wick-type stills show improved distillate yield compared to the conventional water filled stills. Minasian and Al-karaghouli [2] have experimentally investigated an improved design of the single slope coupled to a wick in order to enhance still output. The energy absorbed by the absorber basin is mostly transferred to the water. As a result, water gets heated. In water filled system, early hour radiations are used for acquiring latent heat of evaporation to a greater extent, and then evaporated water gets condensed on the inner surface of the top cover by releasing its latent heat. So, most of the water filled systems show high distillate yield after noon. Phadatare and Verma [3] have studied the variation of productivity with respect to water depth and have concluded that productivity decreases with an increase of water depth. Kalidasa Murugavel and Srithar [4] have conducted experiments on basin-type solar still with different wick materials and concluded optimized output using light cotton wick. The effects of climatic, design, and operational parameters on the productivity of the wick-type solar still have been mentioned by Yeh and Chen [5]. Talbert et al. [6] and Tanaka et al. [7] have mentioned that the wick-type solar still has attractive performance against the basin-type solar still. In this work, a new rippled wick-type solar still integrated with drip system has been constructed; a comparative study has been conducted with flat wick-type solar still. A transient theory has been proposed to validate the ripple effect. 2. Materials and Methods A sectional and photographic view of solar still is presented in Figures 1(a),