Solar Stills Performance and Productivity Enhancement Methods – A detailed Review

摘要

Energy and water are the most essential elements for human’s life. There is an acute shortage of both energy and water, especially in the third world countries. Most of energy demands in the world are met by fossil and nuclear power plants. A small part of energy demands is met by renewable energy technologies such as, solar, wind, biomass and geothermal energy. Many desalination systems have been established to overcome the fresh water lack problem, but most of these techniques need intensive energy source. Therefore, utilization of renewable energy for desalination is considered as the most significant and economical method for producing fresh water with small cost. Solar stills are a valuable devices that can be used for purifying of salty and brackish water for different purposes. In this study, a review of different factors that affecting the solar still productivity such as design parameters, climatic conditions and the operations methods has been studied. In addition the different enhancement techniques like stepped solar still, wicks, internal and external reflectors, internal and external condensers, using phase change materials and using nanoparticles has been presented. From this review it can be concluded that using stepped absorber increases the productivity and using hybrid solar still systems leads to increase the solar still performance and productivity.