Leveraging thermoelectric coolers for solar distillation: A review of design and distillate yield

Abstract Solar desalination techniques were developed to cater to the exponentially growing need for fresh water. The main limitation of solar desalination, suboptimal distillate yield, led researchers to explore and propose multiple solutions including leveraging Thermoelectric coolers (TECs). Thermoelectric coolers induce a cooling and a heating effect that can boost condensation and evaporation rates respectively in solar distillers. This paper examines the existing body of knowledge on the integration of TECs and categorized use cases into three main categories, heating side only, cooling side only and combined integration of heating and cooling sides. For each of the use cases, the design, experimental procedure, distillate yield and Localized Cost of Water (LCOW) are explored. Depending on the environmental and design conditions, it was shown that the daily productivity of TEC-equipped solar stills could range from 1.3 to 8.14 liters per square meter while the LCOW ranged between 0.013 and 0.291$.