Water Desalination Case Study

is the combination of PV technology with RO. Figure 1.3 Possible combinations of renewable sources with water desalination [11]
The potential use of renewable energy sources in small-scale desalination in remote communities has received increasing attention in recent years. The integration of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and geothermal energy with desalination systems holds great promise for tackling water shortage and is a potential for viable solution of climate change problems and water scarcity [11].
1.4 Solar Distillation
The World Health Organization estimates that over a billion people lack access to purified drinking water and the vast majority of these people are living in rural areas. The low population density
Use of solar energy in water desalination is the most promising and cost effective method to provide potable water in remote areas. This is due to the fact that solar energy is available in abundance and space requirement is not a problem in remote villages.
1.4.1 Solar still
Solar still is a device which works on the principle of solar distillation and provides potable water for direct human consumption. It is not feasible to install the commercial methods of water distillation in remote areas as availability of fossil fuel or electricity is scarce in those areas. So in order to provide clean water in remote villages Solar still has emerged as the most effective alternative. As the name suggests it is an immovable device which utilizes the thermal energy of sun light for water distillation. Solar energy is inexhaustible, available in abundance and pollution free. These features make it the best alternative among all renewable energy sources. A typical solar still works on the evaporation and condensation phenomena. Solar energy is utilized to first heat up the liquid water to evaporate it and produce vapour, then the vapour is allowed to get condense on a tilted glass cover. The condensate is then collected as the potable
The device that carries out the solar distillation is generally known as the solar still. Solar still have many advantages such as low cost, simple construction, low maintenance etc. but it has a major disadvantage of lower efficiency and low productivity of potable water. Various experimental and theoretical works have been done by on the solar stills in order to improve the performance. In this section a review of research papers on solar stills and CFD is presented. Literature review has been divided in the following sub