An experimental study on the winter sustainable production of drinkable water from solar still using hot air by solar collectors in Algeria's dry areas

Abstract

Fresh water and environmental pollution are great challenges to the sustainable development of human society. and the distillation process solves this problem. However, a second problem arises; this is a decrease in productivity in winter. The goal of This study aims to overcome this difficulty by modifying the experimental setting by adding air heat of a flat-plate solar air collector that lowers thermal loss  in winter . The experimental data presented in this paper concerns three typical days in the south of Algeria (Ouargla City). The results show that the daily productivity of conventional solar still in the summer is 3.7 kg m−2 and in winter 1.5 kg m− 2. modified  solar  still with air heat in winter is 3.6 kg / m2 per Today .The productivity of conventional solar  still without air heat  in the summer is the best compared to others , but is not in winter because thermal loss . The thermal loss  of conventional solar still  and  modified in Winter is equal to 20.670 W and 81.055 W, respectively .The change in heat loss from day to day is caused by a change in the medium temperature and the effect of wind speed. The lower the thermal loss, the higher the daily productivity for a conventional system, but for the modified system, there is no effect on it.