Gad et al.

(2004) investigated the performance of a simple solar still with moving clothes wick driven with a DC motor via a control circuit. Figure 1 shows the experimental setup, which consists of wooden box basin measuring 80 cm long, 60 cm width with a depth of 15 cm from inside. The box is painted with oil white several times from inside to prevent leakage. The still was covered with 3 mm thick glass and fixed on an iron frame with an inclination angle of 30 facing south. The distillate was collected at the lower edge of the glass cover via a thin iron trough to a calibrated Jar. The compensate water is added from the still top. A black cloth was fixed on two copper rollers as a belt. The lower roller was free, while a high torque DC motor drove the upper roller. The lower roller and the cloth were immersed in the water. The setup was instrumented to measure the inner glass surface and inside bottom temperatures. The ambient air temperature and solar radiation on tilted surface were measured. The solar radiation data and distilled water were collected nearly each 30 minutes. The sampling rate of recorded data was adjusted via the computer program by 5 minutes. The DC motor was also adjusted by the same program to be ON for 30 seconds, and OFF for a specific period of time. The OFF time was taken as 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 minutes. The ON time (30 seconds) was sufficient to keep the cloth wet. The OFF times were tested experimentally. The experiments were performed by them at different motor OFF periods; 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 minutes. The result of their study was presented as, solar still thermal efficiency as a function of OFF period (min), Fig. 12. The thermal efficiency of the still during a certain period, was defined as

where,

mw is the total mass of distilled water collected during this period, Kg L is latent heat of evaporation at the glass temperature, KJ/kg, G is solar radiation on tilted surface, w/m2 A is area of the clothes wick, m2

is operation period, seconds and t is the time, seconds. It was clear that the thermal efficiency increases to a maximum of 0.43 at 25 min OFF period according to the best-fit curve.

Fig. 1 The experimental setup (Gad et al. (2004)).

Fig. 2. The solar still thermal efficiency vs. the OFF period, min (Gad et al. (2004)).