Enhancement of Productivity and Economic Analysis of Tubular Solar Still with Acrylic Cover Material

The integration of solar stills with materials capable of changing the phase and acting as storage for latent heat is an effective option for producing potable water from brackish water. Nevertheless, no single organic phase change material exhibits all the necessary advantageous properties, such as a particular temperature of melting and latent heat of fusion, to function well in a solar still under varying environmental circumstances. A tubular solar still comprising five copper cylinders filled with paraffin wax has shown a significant increase in distillation yield. The impact of depth of basin water on performance of stills was examined (PCM with water depth of 4 cm) using Modified Tubular Solar Still (MTSS) under environmental conditions for city of Bhopal located in Madhya Pradesh, India. The result revealed a collective yield for Conventional Tubular Solar Still (CTSS) and the Modified Tubular Solar Still (MTSS) as approximately 4.1 and 5.5 kg/m2 respectively. The result reveals that total hourly yields for CTSS and MTSS are approximately 1.22 and 2.24 kg/m2 respectively. The production of solar distillate rose by 50.26% with the use of PCM in MTSS, in contrast to the basic scenario without PCM, where the output of solar distillate was 46.44% in CTSS. Water costs per liter for CTSS and MTSS-Acrylic are 0.14 and 0.13 US dollars, respectively.