Novel design of tubular solar still using lightweight star-wick evaporator with graphite nanoparticles
Muapper Alhadri, Shaher Alshammari, Abeer Al‐shammari, Awwad Alshammari, Mohamed M. Z. Ahmed, Swellam W. Sharshir, Mohamed Elashmawy
Abstract
ABSTRACT Clean water is a matter of human life, and solar energy is a promising clean energy resource for future clean water production, helping to combat the severe impacts of climate change. However, the primary barrier to disseminating techniques using solar energy is their high cost compared to conventional technologies. Therefore, the economic development of solar water desalination technologies to lower production costs is a pivotal research trend for the future development of the solar energy water nexus. This study introduced a novel design of a half-tubular solar still with a lightweight rotating star-wick evaporator aided by graphite nanomaterial. The results of the novel design showed significant enhancement compared to the conventional design of the same device without the star-wick facility. The location of all experiments is 30 o N, 32.5 o E (Suez University, Suez, Egypt). The productivity of the novel design reached 6.32 L/m 2 day and the average thermal efficiency reached 55.27%, with a water production cost of 7.47 $/m 3 . Using the novel rotating star-wick enhanced the yield and thermal efficiency by 94.22% and 94.5%, respectively, with a 21.62% reduction in the water production cost.