Performance Monitoring of a Double-Slope Passive Solar-Powered Desalination System Using Arduino Programming

Solar energy is one of the promising renewable energies; it is clean, green, and accepted worldwide for targeting sustainable development through applications such as power generation, desalination, food preservation, etc. Solar-powered desalination has received more attention in recent times to meet the demand of pure water in the rural places of many countries where solar energy is abundant. In the present work, a double-slope passive solar desalination system was fabricated with readily available materials that can be installed and used in rural places, either for domestic purposes or in small-scale industries. The capacity of the desalination system fabricated to be filled with saline water is ~15 L. The performance of the desalination system is continuously monitored by recording the temperatures at various locations around the system, such as the outer surface of the glass, the inner surface of the glass, inside the basin, and outside the basin, through DHT11 sensors controlled by Arduino programming fed in the Arduino UNO board. The influence of solar radiation intensity and temperatures at various locations on the solar still on the thermal performance and production of desalination unit is analyzed by the data recorded by the Arduino program. A cumulative yield of fresh water of around 0.7–0.9 L is recorded every day, and the lowest yield of around 0.55 L was obtained on the third day of experimentation.