SOLAR POWER WATER DISTILLATOR

INTERNSHIP PROJECT REPORT

by

SUVRANSU SEKHAR PATRA (Roll Number: SC10B122)

Department of Avionics Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology Thiruvananthapuram July 2013

BONAFIDE CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that this project report entitled SOLAR POWER WATER DISTILLATOR submitted to Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, is a bonafide record of work done by SUVRANSU SEKHAR PATRA under my supervision from 3rdJune 2013 to 12th July2013

Dr. Priyadarshnam Assistant Professor, Avionics IIST

Dr. Thomas Kurian Dean (Student Activities) Head, Avionics IIST

Place: IIST, Trivandrum Date:

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Declaration by Authors

This to declare that this report has been written by us. No part of the report is plagiarized from other sources. All information included from other sources has been duly acknowledged. I aver that if any part of the report is found to be plagiarized, I shall take full responsibility for it.

SUVRANSU SEKHAR PATRA (Roll Number: SC10B122)

Place: IIST, Trivandrum Date:

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
With a deep sense of gratitude and respect, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) for their kind attention and guidance which have made this project successful.

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude towards Dr.Priyadarshnam, Assistant Professor, Avionics, Dr. Pradeep Kumar P, Assistant Professor, Aerospace Engineering and Dr. Anand Narayanan, Assistant Professor, Earth & Space Sciences, for their constant support, guidance and encouragement throughout the duration of the project. I owe thanks to them for providing the necessary stimuli and environment for accomplishing the work involved in this project. I cannot thank them enough for their active involvement in the project which was a constant force driving me forward. I would also like to acknowledge the help I received from Mr. Akshay Jain, Student, Aerospace Branch IIST (2010 Batch), during crucial stages of the project. His knowledge and experience in Autodesk Inventor and 3D CAD design software CATIA has proven invaluable to the success of this project.

I am grateful to Dr. K.S. Das Gupta (Director -IIST), Dr. Thomas Kurian (HOD Avionics) and Dr. Sheeba Rani (Assistant Professor- Avionics) who provided me with such platform.

SUVRANSU SEKHAR PATRA

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ABSTRACT

As a sustainable carbon-free alternative to fossil-fuels used to meet the challenge of increasing energy demands in the 21st century, solar energy plays a significant role in the reduction of greenhouse gases. Based on the current situation of energy and disadvantage of present Distillation methods, a high efficiency and secure Solar Distillation service system directly utilizing solar power has been introduced. It can make full use of solar-energy, shorten the time for heating, reducing the amount of energy consumption, cut the cost without polluting the environment and provide us with the distilled water. Our project goal is to efficiently produce distilled water from solar energy. This could be used in many applications, such as, providing distilled water for lead acid batteries, chemistry laboratory, instrumentation laboratory, and also used for distilling gomutra (Cow's urine) in ayurvedic medicines to produce gomutra ark (distilled Cow's urine). To achieve this goal, a system was designed incorporating a parabolic solar dish coupled with a heating chamber and condenser. The incoming solar radiation from the sun is focused and concentrated onto a heating chamber using a parabolic dish, heating the water present inside the vessel, after that the water evaporates at atmospheric pressure and then the condenser converts the steam into distilled water. Future goals for this project include calculation refinement, advanced and more efficient design, controllers, and solar tracker.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DESCRIPTION CERTIFICATE DECLARATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ABSTRACT 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 SOLAR RADIATION 1.2 ALBEDO 2. ESTIMATION OF AREA OF REFLECTOR PLATES 2.1 ESTIMATION 3. DESIGNS 3.1 DESIGN 1 3.2 DESIGN II 3.3 DESIGN III 3.4 DESIGN IV 3.4.1 PARABOLIC REFLECTOR

i ii iii iv v

2 4

8 9 10 12 13 13 14 14 14 15 15

3.4.2 HEATING CHAMBER 3.4.3 GASKET 3.4.4 RELIEF VALVE 3.4.5 REFLECTING MATERIAL 3.4.6 HOLDER 3.4.7 BASE

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3.4.8 ARM MANUFACTURING 4. RESULT AND CONCLUSION 4.1 READINGS TAKEN FROM SOLAR REFLECTOR 4.2 GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION 4.3 CONCLUSION 4.4 FUTURE APPLICATION APPENDIX: CAD DRAWINGS REFERNCES

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17

19 19 20 21 28

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Water is the basic necessity for human along with food and air. There is almost no water left on Earth that is safe to drink without purification. Only 1% of Earth's water, available in liquid state, is fresh and nearly all of this is polluted by toxic chemicals. Thus purification of water supplies is extremely important. Moreover, typical purification systems are easily damaged or compromised by disasters, natural or otherwise. This results in a challenging situation for individuals trying to prepare for such situations, and keep themselves and their families safe from the countless diseases and toxic chemicals present in untreated water. Everyone wants to find out the solution of above problem with the available sources of energy in order to achieve pure water. Fortunately there is a solution to these problems. That is use of the solar energy. It is a technology that is not only capable of removing a very wide variety of contaminants but also simple, cost-effective, and eco-friendly. Solar distillation is a tried and true technology. The first known use of this technique dates back to 1551 when it was used by Arab alchemists. Other scientists and naturalists used stills (solar distillator) over the coming centuries including Della Porta (1589), Lavoisier (1862), and Mauchot (1869).[1] The first "conventional" solar still plant was built in 1872 by the Swedish engineer Charles Wilson in the mining community of Las Salinas in what is now northern Chile (Region II). This still was a large basin-type still used for supplying fresh water using brackish feed water to a nitrate mining community. The plant used wooden bays which had blackened bottoms using logwood dye and alum. The total area of the distillation plant was 4,700 square meters. On a typical summer day this plant produced 4.9 kg of distilled water per square meter of still surface, or more than 23,000 litres per day. [2] Basic principal of working of solar distillator is Solar energy heats water, evaporates it (salts and microbes left behind), and condenses the steam to provide us with distilled water.

1.1 SOLAR RADIATION The sun is the main source of heat and light for the entire solar system. It is made up of extremely hot gaseous matter, and gets progressively hotter towards its center. The heat is generated by various kinds of fusion reactions. The sun is approximately spherical in shape; about 1.39x106 km in diameter and having an average distance from the earth of 1.496x108 km (Fig. 1.1(a)). The solar disc subtends a very small angle of 32' at any point on the earth's surface and hence, the radiation received from the sun directly on the earth's surface can be considered parallel for all practical purposes.

Fig. 1.1(a) Sun-Earth Geometric Relationship

The earth is approximately spherical in shape, about 1.27x104 km in diameter. The energy flux received from the sun outside the earth's atmosphere is of nearly constant value and is termed as the Solar Constant (Isc). It is defined as the energy received outside the atmosphere, per second, by a unit surface area normal to the direction of sun's rays at the mean sun-earth distance; its value is accepted as 1366 W/m2. However, because the earth revolves round the sun in an elliptical orbit with the sun as one of the foci, there is a variation in the extraterrestrial radiation. Hence, the intensity of extraterrestrial radiation on a plane normal to sun's rays on any day is given by: Iext = Isc [1.0 0.033 cos (360n / 365)] (where n is the day of the year and is 1 n 365) [6]

The graph shown in Fig. 1.1(b) stipulates the relationship between Solar Elevation and the Solar Azimuth of our current location, i.e. IIST, Trivandrum (latitudes 8.63 longitudes 77.03) and the data is obtained from University of Oregon Solar Radiation Monitoring Laboratorys software tool to create sun chart.

Fig. 1.1(b) Solar Elevation vs Solar Azimuth

1.2 ALBEDO Albedo or reflection coefficient is defined as the diffuse reflectivity or reflecting power of a surface. It is the ratio of reflected radiation from the surface to the incident radiation upon it. It is a dimensionless quantity. It could be also expressed as a percentage. Albedo depends on the radiation frequency. In general, the albedo depends on the directional distribution of incoming radiation. The albedo of a surface is measured on a scale from 0 to 1, where 0 is a black surface with no reflection, and 1 represents an idealized white surface that has perfect reflection. The Earthshine project [3] investigated a phenomenon where light reflected by Earth illuminates the dark side of the moon. By measuring the brightness, albedo or diffuse reflectivity could be estimated. The average overall planetary albedo of Earth, is 30 to 35%, because of the covering by clouds, but varies widely locally across the surface, depending on the geological and environmental features. [4]

Table 1.2 Albedo (reflectivity) of various surfaces [5] Surface Fresh snow Old snow Sand Grass Dry soil Wet earth Forest Thick cloud Thin cloud Percent Reflected 80-90 50-60 20-40 5-25 25-25 10 5 70-85 25-30

CHAPTER 2: ESTIMATION OF AREA OF REFLECTOR PLATES

2.1 ESTIMATION Albedo = a Luminosity of Sun = L (J/sec) Solar Constant/ Flux = F (J/sec/m2) Area = A (m2) Time = t (sec) Mass of water = m (kg) Specific heat Capacity = c = 4.1855 J/kg.K Energy incident on reflector plates = E Change in temperature = Final temperature = T Efficiency of the system = = 0.7 Distance between Earth and Sun = d = 1366 J/sec

Energy required for heating = mc A=

Consider water inside the vessel is at room temperature = 25OC and mass of water = 0.5 liter If we assume that time taken to heat water up to 100C would be around 30min, then the relationship between area of the reflector plates with the varying albedo is shown in Fig. 2.3(a)

Fig. 2.3(a) If we assume the albedo to be 0.3 than the relationship between area of the reflector plates and the time taken to heat the water up to 100C is shown in Fig. 2.3(b)

Fig. 2.3(b)
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If we consider the least possible area for the reflector plates to be 0.1 m2 we get the following relationship between albedo and time of heating.

Fig. 2.3(c) The above three graphs allows us to choose appropriate design parameters depending on the area, time of heating and albedo of a place.

CHAPTER 3: DESIGNS

In this chapter we consider different design alternatives which are already in use for water heating/distillation plants.

3.1 DESIGN 1 The design is divided into two major parts which is shown in Fig. 3.1 Part I is the one where the vessel, containing water, is placed at the focus of the reflector plates. This vessel is enclosed by the glass or polythene sheet in order to trap the sunlight, using Greenhouse Effect. Part II plays a role as a heat absorber and re-heating the water. This contains a salt which could trap solar energy effectively and could be used during the sunset or during night. Because most salts only melt at high temperatures (table salt, for example, melts at around 1472 degrees Fahrenheit, or 800 degrees Celsius)
[13]

and do not turn to vapor until they get considerably

hotterthey can be used to store a lot of the sun's energy as heat. And after the above steps, super-heated water is converted into steam which is then passed to the condenser unit and the distilled water could be collected.

Fig. 3.1 Design I

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Its main disadvantage is that to be effective, the salt require too much of heat and thereby reducing the system efficiency. It could be done only on large scale with vast number of reflector plates. Its not cost effective. 3.2 DESIGN II This design is basically a modification of the previous design I in order to further improve the efficiency by increasing the amount of energy incident on the heating vessel by modifying the design of the reflector plates. Its being named as Papillon because of its shape which resembles a butterfly with open wings. The Papillon was developed in 1997 by Dipl. Ing. J. Dessel in collaboration with Prof. Bernd Hafner and the Solarinstitut Jlich in Germany. [7]

Fig. 3.2 Papillon Solar Reflector Plates

In the Papillon there are only 2 wings. In order to further improve its efficiency two more wings could be added thus making a half sphere like structure. As area would increase the energy incident on the vessel would increase thereby reducing the time to boil water. Further the efficiency of this system could be increased by enclosing the heating vessel.
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Its main disadvantage is that brazing is done in order to construct this structure thus making design a bit unstable and hard handling. It would be better if this design could be constructed only with nut and bolts.

3.3 DESIGN III This is design is entirely different from the previous two designs. Instead of solar reflectors, Fresnel lens is used in order to concentrate solar energy on the heating vessel.

FRESNEL LENS A Fresnel lens is a compact lens which was developed by French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel.
[8]

Fresnel lenses are generally made up of glass or plastic. Fresnel reflectors are also

currently being used into next-generation solar thermal-energy systems. The main advantage of Fresnel lens is that it reduces the amount of material required as compared with conventional lens. Its done by dividing the lens into a set of concentric annular sections as shown in Table 3.3. An ideal Fresnel lens would have infinitely many such sections. In each section, we decrease the overall thickness as compared to a simple lens. This effectively divides the continuous surface of a lens into a set of surfaces having same curvature, with stepwise discontinuities between them, therefore doesnt change the property of that lens. [9] Fresnel lens, as shown in Fig. 3.3, is generally used in overhead projectors, projection televisions, hand-held sheet magnifying glasses, lighthouse and old street lamps or oil lamps.

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Fig. 3.3 Fresnel lens grooves

Table 3.3 Steps to convert Round Glass into a Fresnel lens [10] STEPS Take a conventional lens Figures

Draw evenly spaced horizontal lines that are the height you want the grooves of the Fresnel lens to be. Then draw vertical lines wherever a horizontal one meets the curve of the lens. Highlight the areas where the curves are boxed in. Thus obtaining the grooves of your Fresnel lens.

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Drop all the highlighted curved pieces down in a way that their bottoms line up.

Add a base and remove the horizontal and vertical lines and the original lens.

And finally adjusting all the parts to get the required Fresnel lens.

December 2012: Bernhard Mller has published findings based on his experimentation with a twin Fresnel lens reflector solar cooker. This cooker was never meant to be a production prototype, and his company, Mueller Solartechnik, no longer manufactures solar cookers. As an engineering exercise, he has shown that incorporating the Fresnel lens produces quite high temperatures (278.6C/534F). So in order to prevent melting of vessel, in which water is placed, a glass vessel with a steel wool inside is being used for the purpose of Solar-Distillation. [11] The main advantage of Fresnel lens over reflector plates is its efficiency and effectiveness to concentrate solar energy. So in order to prevent melting of vessel, in which water is placed, glass with a steel wool inside is being used for the purpose of Solar-Distillation. In order to further increase the effectiveness of the Fresnel lens you can create Death Beam by adding another converging lens at the focus of the Fresnel lens. This appears to be the most efficient design but due to the cost as well as the availability of a large size Fresnel lens we had to drop this design.

3.4 DESIGN IV In this design we used a Parabolic Reflector Plates and Heating Chamber (Pressure Cooker) and a cooling jacket (Condenser) as shown in Fig 3.4(a) and 3.4(b). It is basically a modification of Design II.
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3.4.1 PARABOLIC REFLECTOR PLATES The distinction is like the one between circles and spheres. It is a curved surface with the crosssectional shape of a parabola, to direct the solar waves. An incoming plane solar wave parallel to the axis will be focused to a point at the focal point. One disadvantage of a parabolic reflector is that the solar energy is concentrated in a very small area, which could be too small for a particular purpose. In order to increase the efficiency the vessel should be blackened from bottom and must be polished everywhere. As a matter of fact small parabola dish can make quickly heat the contents so its preferred to use large number dishes of smaller area rather than using a single big dish and smaller dishes are of course easy to handle than a big one. Parabolas with focal lengths of 1 to 3 meters (3 to 10 feet) are preferred for solar cooking. The solar image diameter is about 1/120 the focal length. For focal lengths in the range above, the image of the sun will be 8 to 25 mm (1/3 to 1 inch). As the earth rotates, the image moves 87 to 260 mm (10 image diameters) in 20 minutes. [14] For more information see Appendix 1 (Fig. 1) DIMENSIONS Parabola Dish used has Major Axis = 65 cm Minor Axis = 60 cm

3.4.2 HEATING CHAMBER It is basically a sealed vessel which does not permit air or liquids to escape below a pre-set pressure. In an ordinary non-pressurized cooking vessel, the boiling point of water is 100 C (212 F) at standard pressure (1 atm). But in a sealed vessel, the boiling point of water increases as the pressure rises, resulting in superheated water. At a pressure of 1 atm (15 psi) above atmospheric pressure, water in a pressure cooker can reach a temperature of up to 121 C (250 F). [12] For more information see Appendix 1 (Fig. 2).
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DIMENSIONS Heating Chamber used has Diameter of the base = 15 cm Height = 8 cm Perimeter = 47.1 cm Capacity = 1.5 ltr

3.4.3 GASKET A gasket or sealing ring, made from either rubber or silicone, forms a gas-tight seal that does not allow air or steam to escape between the lid and pan. Normally, the only way steam can escape is through a regulator on the lid while the cooker is pressurized. If the regulator is blocked, a safety valve provides an escape route for steam. A loose-fitting rubber plug in the lid, held in place by steam pressure, provides a simple safety valve. If the pressure exceeds the limits, the plug pops out thus depressurizing the pot.

3.4.4 RELIEF VALVE A safety valve is a valve mechanism which automatically releases a substance from a boiler, pressure vessel, or other system, when the pressure or temperature exceeds preset limits.

3.4.5 REFLECTING MATERIAL Mirrors and Aluminum are the best reflective material but the problem over aluminum is that aluminum foil gets wrinkled up and aluminum sheet does not gives a parabola shape thus we choose small mirror of 4 cm2 (2x2) so that the focus of the parabola wont be shifted much.

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3.4.6 HOLDER An iron rod of 0.5cm thickness and 2.5cm height was used to manufacture a holder. A holder holds the cooker at the focal point of the reflector plates. For more information see Appendix 1 (Fig. 3).

3.4.7 BASE A GI sheet of approximate dimension 0.5m x 0.5m is used to make the base of the heating chamber. Its primary objective is to align the vessel at the focal point and to provide support to the vessel. For more information about the manufacturing see Appendix 1 (Fig. 4).

3.4.8 ARM MANUFACTURING A tripod is made in order to provide support to the heating chamber (pressure cooker). A rod of stainless steel of diameter inches is placed inside a rod of diameter inches such that the length of the system could easily be varied. For more information see Appendix 1 (Fig. 5, Fig. 6 and Fig. 7).

Fig. 3.1(a)
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Fig 3.1(b)
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CHAPTER 4: RESULT AND CONCLUSION

Experiment is performed from 10:30am to 01:30pm. Mass of water = 500 ml Initial Temperature of water = 21oC Weather Condition = Cloudy/Rainy Atmospheric Temperature = 27oC (avg)

4.1 READINGS TAKEN FROM SOLAR REFLECTOR

Table 4.1 represents the reading taken for temperature of water at various period of time using the solar reflector. Table 4.1 Reading for Solar Reflector TIME 10:30 10:35 10:40 10:45 10:50 10:55 11:00 11:10 11:15 11:20
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TEMPERATURE (oC) 21 22 22 23 24 24 26 27 29 30

11:30 11:35 11:44 11:50 12:00 12:04 12:10 12:14 12:18 12:25 12:27 12:30 12:35 12:40 12:41 12:48 12:52 12:58 13:00 13:10 13:15 13:20 13:30

31 32 32 33 35 37 38 39 40 42 42 42 43 44 45 47 51 52 55 57 60 63 67

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4.2 GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION In the Fig. 4.2 temperature variation in the solar reflector is shown. The maximum temperature of the system is 670C obtained at 01:30pm.

Fig. 4.2 Temperature variation of the solar reflector

4.3 CONCLUSION As can be seen from the table, we were able to achieve a maximum temperature of only 67 degree Celsius which was due to the cloudy weather conditions. The current temperature rise is not enough to vaporize the water and use it for distillation. Further experiments needs to be conducted to determine the full capability of the system during clear sky condition. The reflectivity of the glass also needs to be measured. The current focus appears to be larger than the base area of the heating vessel. Some adjustments needs to be made for the glass pieces. We hope that with these modifications and during the clear sky day sufficient temperature rise would be obtained.
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4.4 FUTURE APPLICATION A large reflector area will provide significant amount of heat and hence substantial amount of distilled water can be obtained for various applications such as chemistry lab, car batteries etc. Further, a large scale and modified version can be used to melt the salts, kept in the pressurized insulated chamber, during the day time which can be used to boil the water at night. Thus giving a 24x7 supply of steam.[Gemma Solar Project][15] Its improved version can be used with a turbine to generate electricity.

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APPENDIX : CAD DRAWINGS

PARABOLIC REFLECTOR PLATES

Fig. 1
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HEATING CHAMBER

Fig. 2

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HOLDER

Fig. 3

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BASE

Fig. 4

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INNER RODS

Fig. 5

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OUTER-I RODS

Fig. 6

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OUTER-II RO

DS Fig. 7

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REFERNCES
1. ^Akash BA, Mohsen MS, Osta O and Elayan Y,Experimental evaluation of a single-basin solar still usingdifferent absorbing materials,renewable energy- 14, 1998,307-310. 2. ^ Solar Still Basics SolAqua. (http://www.solaqua.com/solwatdis1.html) 3. ^Goode, P. R.; et al. (2001). "Earthshine Observations of the Earth's Reflectance". Geophysical Research Letters 28 (9): 16711674. Bibcode:2001GeoRL..28.1671G. doi:10.1029/2000GL012580. 4. ^Environmental Encyclopedia, 3rd ed., Thompson Gale, 2003, ISBN 0-7876-5486-8 5. ^Arguments Supporting the Theory of Snowball Earth (http://ecosystems.wcp.muohio.edu/studentresearch/climatechange03/snowball/web%20page/argum
entsfor.html)

6. HANDBOOK ON ENERGY CONSCIOUS BUILDINGS Prepared under the interactive R & D project no. 3/4(03)/99-SEC between Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Solar Energy Centre, Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources J.K. Nayak, J.A. Prajapati (May 2006) 7. ^Solar Cookers World Network (http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Papillon) 8. ^ "Fresnel lens". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 19 March 2013 9. ^ Fresnel Lens Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_lens#cite_note-1) 10. ^Rimstar.org- an addiction to science, renewable energy and building stuff (http://rimstar.org/equip/fresnel_lens.htm) 11. ^Die Parabel, Brochure (German), 36 pages, ISBN 978-3-8442-4131-0, epubli GmbH, Berlin and Das Solarkocher-Handbuch, 240 pages, ISBN 978-3-8442-4471-7, epubli GmbH, Berlin Preview 12. ^Pressure Cooking Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_cooking)
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13. ^How to Use Solar Energy, at Night Molten salts can store the sun's heat during the day and provide power at night- By David Biello 14. ^Solar Cookers International Networks (http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Parabolic_solar_reflectors) 15. ^Gemma solar project (http://www.torresolenergy.com/TORRESOL/gemasolar-plant/en) 16. ^Ministry of New and Renewable Energy Govt. of India website ( http://www.mnre.gov.in/)

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