Effects of Purities of Water and Intensity of Sunlight on the Performance of Single Slope Solar Still

Tok, Wei Moon (2023) Effects of Purities of Water and Intensity of Sunlight on the Performance of Single Slope Solar Still. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology.

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Abstract

Industrialization and urbanization in city have affected the water quality and has caused a shortage of clean water supply in our time. Many citizens in some country like Africa or India had been facing many health problems due to the insufficient clean water supply in their living area. Long period of time exposed to unclean water had brought different types of diseases such as Cholera, Typhoid, and Dysentery into their life. Solar still is one of a fundamental device that utilize solar energy to produce clean water. In previous research, various modification and improvement of solar still had been implemented in order to enhance the solar still’s performance. However, the performance of the solar still could also be influenced by on the purities of water sources and intensity of solar radiation. The aim of this study is to experimental evaluate the effect of purities of water sources and intensity of sunlight to the performance of single slope solar still(SSSS). In this project, a SSSS was fabricated to conduct the experiments because of the inexpensive design and highly productivity under proper parameter. There were four different raw water sources has been selected in this project which are tap water, river water, lake water and sea water. The raw water sample collected form different sources were categorized under certain parameters which are pH values, total dissolved solids(TDS) and water salinity before conduct experiments. The water sample being distilled after experiments also were measured again to compare the changes before and after to determine whether is suitable for human consumption. Furthermore, besides of affect by water source, the productivity of still is affect by solar radiation as well. The intensity of solar was measured by solar power meter and the productivity is observe when the sunlight is strong and weak. The experiments were conducted in the TARUMT campus under similar climatic conditions. The results showed that the productivity of a single slope solar still increased with the quality of the raw water source. The findings revealed that tap water had the best water quality among the selected water sources. As a result, it was deemed the most suitable raw water source for the SSSS to produce clean water, achieving the highest productivity and yield efficiency compared to the other selected water sources used in this project. These results demonstrate the potential of tap water as an optimal raw water source for the production of clean water using a single slope solar still.