Experimental Study Of The Distillation Process In A Tilted Cavity

Heat and mass transfer correlations in a basin solar still are not applicable for brine-flowing type solar still. Thermal efficiency is hard to determine explicitly due to the varying temperature of brine along the flow direction. A simple method is proposed in the present work to evaluate the performance of the brine-flowing type still through the energy balance equation of brine. Experiments in a tilted cavity which is used to simulate a brine-flowing type solar still are conducted, and it is found that thermal efficiency of the simulated still is always less than 76.3%. An empirical equation is obtained, which may provide a clue for the development of an explicit theoretical model to predict fresh water production of the brine-flowing solar still.