Experimental investigation for a new solar desalination system

The growing scarcity of fresh water is driving the implementation of desalination on an increasingly large scale. However, the energy required to run desalination plants remains a drawback. The idea of using renewable energy sources is fundamentally attractive and many studies have been conducted in this area. An experimental rig was especially designed and developed in this work in order to produce fresh water by using a new technology of solar distillation. The test rig was designed to study the effect of using concentrators in desalination field. The unit is used to investigate the influence of using concentrators on water production by distillation instead of using normal stills which use direct sun rays only. A chain of experimental designations was introduced by the group, Firstly a new Solar Desalination System (SDS) was developed with specific dimensions for the parabolic reflector and the absorber. Three more modifications were conducted to the system. The influence of different environmental, design and operational parameters on the solar distillation unit productivity have been investigated in each case. The different rig designs have shown a great progress in water productivity especially with the last modification however, improvements were coupled with rising cost. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.