Experimental analysis and CFD modelling for pyramidal solar sti…

Water is a basic human need. Approximately 25 L of clean, safe water is consumed by each person on Earth for different purposes like cleaning, drinking, cooking, and for simply keeping themselves clean. As a criterion, an adequate, clean and safe drinking water supply has to be available for each person [1]. Clean water contributes a lot to wellbeing, which impacts the social and financial advancement of any country. People who don’t utilize clean water are inclined to waterborne infections and they can't adequately connect with themselves in financial exercises. In effort to cure diseases caused by polluted water, financial resources of country have been allocated in many development projects. Thus, it can be said ill health contributes to the hold of economic growth [2].

It has been studied that, purified water leads to decline in rate of illness [3]. Therefore, a production of potable water is required. Renewable energy is best suited for this purpose because it have low input cost, low environmental impact and less effort [4]. Solar water treatments give excellent results, having advantage of natural cleansing processes found in nature. At the domestic level, Compact and small size potable solar units for water treatment is popular because they are inexpensive and almost no investment or infrastructure are needed for it. Hence, for developing nations with an abundance of solar energy, this found to be a very good option [5].

A solar still is a simple device use for the removal of contaminates from water [6]. It can be described as a basin having blackened inner surface to absorb maximum solar radiation. Transparent material like glass is used at top cover, so that, solar energy can pass through it and heats up the brine water in basin. The vapor then rises and condenses on the underside of the top cover [7].

In last few years, many researches have been carried out for improving the behavior of performance of solar still [8]. It has been observed that performance of solar still can be altered by modifying its geometry [9]. Shading effect of side wall in conventional single slope solar still reduces its performance. This can be eliminated by using pyramidal solar still because it have low height side wall. To select the dimensions, thermal and optical parameters of the pyramidal solar still to operate under specific conditions, it was very laborious and expensive to carry out this task experimentally. As a result, an effectual tool for simulating the behavior of pyramidal solar still was necessary. For this purpose, a 3-D Computational fluid dynamics model is created with help of ANSYS FLUENT. Besides, the fabrication and performance evaluation of pyramidal solar still design are presented. The experimental results and simulation results are compared.