Enhancing solar water desalination with wax infused glass for sustained distillate yield

This study explores how adding wax-filled glass bottles to a conventional solar still affects its performance. Therefore, the objective is to enhance the thermal storage and optimize distillate yield of the solar still. The experiment involved two solar stills, both made of fiber-reinforced plastic. One of the stills was modified by placing wax-filled glass bottles inside, while the other remained unaltered for comparison. The wax-filled glass bottles play a dual role in this setup. First, they act as latent heat storage units, capturing and storing heat from the sun during the day. Second, since glass is a poor conductor of heat, it releases the stored heat to the water in the basin slowly and steadily. This controlled heat transfer allows the solar still to maintain a consistent flow of distillate, even during the night when the sun is no longer providing energy. By comparing the two stills, one with and one without the wax-filled glass bottles, the study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of this modification in enhancing the continuous production of distillate, particularly during nocturnal hours. It has been observed that the distillate output from still augmented with wax filled glass is 17 % higher in contrast to the conventional unit. Moreover, the cost of distillate production has been lowered by 9.5 % due to the proposed augmentation.