Performance Assessment of a Solar Still Using Blackened Surface

In this work, a blackened solar still has been fabricated and experimentally investigated for distillation of water. A tilted flat plate blackened-type solar still was designed for this purpose and fabricated. Solar still productivity is investigated by changing the input water quantity in the basin of the solar still. Indoor experimental testing was carried out. The effect of input water flow rate on the still productivity and purity of output water is investigated together. With the increase in quantity of input water, the solar still efficiency increases. The tests were conducted using the irradiance from a lamp array. It is found that 150 ml of distilled water is collected for a working period of 2 hours at 800 W input. An average overall efficiency of the designed solar still is found to be 7.95% for the 30 L of input water. With increase in water input to the solar still, its efficiency increases marginally. For the water input of 20 and 30 L, the solar still efficiencies are 7.41 and 7.95%, respectively. The quality of the distilled water is also determined experimentally and found to be satisfactory. Preliminary tests on the quality of distillate proved the possible use of the fabricated solar still for the production of distilled water for different uses in the college premises. By using the fabricated solar still, conductivity and TDS value of the sample water reduced significantly.