Journal of Energy Storage 26 (2019) 100959

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Energy Storage

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/est

Experimental study and analysis of solar still desalination using phase T

change materials
⁎
Hasan Mousaa,b, , Jamil Nasera, Ashish M. Gujarathia, Salsabeel Al-Sawafia
a
Sultan Qaboos University, Department of Petroleum and Chemical Engineering, Box 33, Muscat 123, Oman
b
Jordan University of Science and Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, Box 3030, Irbid 22110, Jordan

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: A solar unit to investigate the effect of PCM on the temperature change of the water during the entire day (day
Phase change material time and night time) was designed. The unit is also used to test the effect of PCM on the amount of fresh water
Renewable energy produced. Candle wax (tricosane) was used as PCM and its amount was varied to achieve the ratio of mass of
Solar basin PCM to mass of water of 0, 0.17, 0.35 and 0.51 respectively. The amount of water used was fixed throughout all
Solar desalination
the experiment at 3 kg tap water. The wax was placed in copper tubes immersed in water. The results showed
Solar energy
that presence of PCM causes the appearance of two zones in which the temperature is strongly affected by the
PCM. The first zone appears due to the melting of the PCM (during day time) and the second zone appears due to
solidification (during night time) of the PCM. The effect of the PCM is prominent in the second zone where the
temperature remains constant at the PCM melting point. The length of the solidification zone is proportional to
the amount of PCM. Fresh water production is strongly affected by the presence of the PCM. During the day time
fresh water production is inversely proportion to the value of R. However, during the night time fresh water
production is directly proportional to the value of R.

1. Introduction
Through the era of the twenty-first century, there has been a lot of
interest in renewable energy, because of the depletion of the fossil fuels
resources, as well as the sharp rise in oil prices. Since ancient times,
humans have harvested light and heat that emitted from the sun to their
advantage using a combination of constantly evolving technologies.
Solar energy technologies include the use of solar thermal energy for
direct heating, thermal process, photovoltaic electricity generation,
solar-based architectural designs and solar desalination, technologies
that can contribute significantly in solving some of the most pressing
problems today. Solar desalination is one of these technologies that are
receiving global attention due to the scarcity of water in many places in
the world. Solar desalination is a simple, durable and affordable al-
ternative way to solve the problems of arid remote areas of the world,
which are rich in solar irradiation.
One of the applications of solar desalination is solar still which
consumes solar energy to purify water of pollutants, including salts,
heavy metals, and microbes. This distillation process from some aspects
simulates the natural water cycle of the earth. It contains only a few
moving parts and its operating and maintenance requirements are low.
Solar still distillation may be a good treatment option for developing
countries that have plenty of sunny days, because it is cheap and almost
no investment or infrastructure is required. However, such systems
adhere to the power of sunlight and are more effective in the warm,
sunny climate [1,2].
Since the main drawback of the solar still is its low productivity,
many researchers around the world have conducted numerous studies
on the improvement of solar still productivity. They are assessing the
impact of some important factors on the performance of the system
such as the impact of climate, operating conditions, and geographical
location [3]. Good results were published by researchers in enhancing
solar still system performance. Most of them found that the absorption
area, water depth, and temperature of glass cover affect the still pro-
ductivity [4]. In addition, they enhanced the performance of still by
adding a layer of the heat storage material like gravel, sawdust, and
sand in the still base [5]. Moreover, in order to improve solar still en-
ergy absorption and increase water evaporation, sponges, rubber, alu-
minum plate or fins, and solar collector were added [5]. Recently, re-
searchers have turned to use heat storage to improve the production of
solar still. Storage materials store energy in the form of either sensible
or latent heat. The latent heat energy is stored during the charging time
and released to the water during the discharging time [6]. Many ex-
perimental and theoretical studies were conducted to investigate the

⁎
Corresponding author at: Sultan Qaboos University, Department of Petroleum and Chemical Engineering, Box 33, Muscat 123, Oman.
E-mail address: hasana@squ.edu.om (H. Mousa).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.est.2019.100959
Received 10 August 2019; Received in revised form 15 September 2019; Accepted 16 September 2019
Available online 20 September 2019
2352-152X/ © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
H. Mousa, et al.
effect of phase change materials (PCM) as a storage system on the solar
stills productivity [7,8]. A detailed review of Nano-enhanced phase
change materials is carried out which discusses the ideal characteristics
of nano-enhanced PCM, thermo-physical properties, applications as
well as the challenges and direction of nano enhanced PCM [9]. In
another review of PCM for energy storage applications focused on ap-
plication of various phase change materials based on their thermo-
physical properties such as the melting point, thermal energy storage
density and thermal conductivity of the organic, inorganic and eutectic
phase change materials [10]. A hybrid mechanism of PCM (magnetic
and solar driven energy conversion) design showed excellent thermal
stability with high melting–freezing enthalpy and excellent reversibility
[11]. A sunlight-driven thermoelectric system with temperature dif-
ference control characteristic resulted in Ultrafast photo thermal con-
version of the PCHSM through the nonradiative decay of the excited
state. The newly proposed design showed that the solar radiation was
efficiently utilized [12]. The extensive review of phase change mate-
rials showed various applications of PCM based materials and focused
on challenges faced by PCM based units in different applications
[13,14].
Critical review of PCM based study on the wide applications of PCM
was carried out recently by Asgharian and Baniasadi [15]. Parsazadeh
and Duan [16] used nanofluid in energy storage unit (of vertical shell
and tube form) and carried out simultaneous study of performance of
energy stroage and heat transfer. They found that a critical con-
centration of nanofluids exists below which the overall heat transfer
rate and thus melting process of PCM was acclerated. However, if the
nanofluid particle concetration is increased beyond the critical con-
cetation, the performance of energy storage cell decreases. This showed
a demand towards identifying the optimum nanofluid concetration in
energy storage cells. Recentrly Zayed et al. [17] presetned a specific
applciations of casceded PCMs in collection of solar water tanks. There
review included through classfication of tracking and non-tracking
collectors. A demand towards exergy specific optimization is re-
commended for design of multi-stage energy storage applications. An-
otther review on latent heat based thermal storage for multiple goals
includes load management and stability based aspect of material was
caried out by Reddy et al. [18]. They examined the schematics of cer-
tain thermal systems and described the results of thermal management
based prototype for different applications. Reddy et al. [18] and Waqas
et al. [19] showed that the PCM based coolling has helped to lower CO2
emmissions by lowering the ventilation and cooling loads of building,
specially during summer season. Solé et al. [20] studied the stability of
sugar alcohols as PCM using FT-IR. They concluded that after cyclying
100 times, the material has changed its appearance from white powder
before cycle to black burned mass, thus there is a mean change in the
whole molecule, but the thermo-physical values remained unaltered. A
detailed reivew of tubular solar still inlcuding use of differente eh-
nancement techquiqe was carried out by Sharshir et al. [21]. They re-
ported that in the studied cases, the productivity increses by lowering
the thickness of solar still cover. Zayed et al. [22] reviewed normal and
nanocomposite phase change materials performance augmentation of
solar water collector. They found that using metal and graphite foams
in nanocomposite PCMs is helpful in improving the heat transfer be-
havior and thermal conductivity of PCMs. A State-of art review of re-
newable energy based desalination units related to applications in solar
energy highlighted the success of desalination based projects [23]. El-
Bialy et al. [24] used excel based cost analysis for different configura-
tions of passive and active solar stills. Their cost analysis results showed
that the passive and active solar still costings are competitive compared
to available options in the markets. Another review focused on all the
indirect solar desalination technologies along with economic feasibility
and cost affecting parameters for each technology [25]. Martinopoulos
and Tsalikis [26] analyzed the diffusion and adoption of solar energy
conversion systems in Greece during the last forty years. Their results
showed that the conserved energy reaches 2% of the gross inland
2
Journal of Energy Storage 26 (2019) 100959
consumption while the abated CO2 emissions are also substantial. In
their another extended study Martinopoulos et al. [27] evaluated a
performance of 2 m2 phase change flat plate solar collector in terms of
efficiency using different parameters such as ratio of heat carrier vo-
lume to available collector volume and of the inclination of the col-
lector, as well as of mass flow rate.
In a previous work, the authors conducted theoretical study to in-
vestigate the effect of PCM on the variation of temperature of the
system subjected to a constant heat rate [28] and variable heat source
(mimicking the solar energy) [29,30]. In this work, the role of PCM on
the temperature variation of the water in the still was experimentally
investigated. Moreover, the effect of PCM on the water productivity was
measured as well. Tricosane (candle wax) was used as a PCM since it is
stable, cheap, safe, and available. The melting point and the latent heat
of fusion of the PCM are 47.65 °C and 234 kJ/kg respectively [31]. The
experiments were conducted during April-August 2018 in Muscat,
Oman. The effect of various parameters like the amount of PCM, the
solar irradiation intensity, and the ambient weather conditions on the
variation of the water temperature and the unit productivity are in-
vestigated.
2. Experimental part
A single slope solar still is designed and used to conduct the ex-
perimental part of this work. The solar still is made of a rectangular
metal basin covered with a 4 mm thick glass panel with a slope of
∼30ο. At the bottom side of the basin, copper tubes filled with PCM are
laid down and submerged under water. Sliding water condensate at the
inside surface of the inclined glass panel is collected from the lower end
of the glass panel in a graduated cylinder using a collection tray. All
metal sides of the solar still were insulated with a 1.5 cm thick poly-
styrene board to minimize heat losses (Fig. 1.).
The metal basin had a rectangle shape of 0.62 m length and 0.41 m
width, while its height from the backside is 0.54 m reducing to 0.195 m
at the front side. The basin was painted with a black color to maximize
the absorption of solar irradiation. A small channel was installed in the
lower front side on the glass panel to collect the sliding water con-
densate from the glass cover. At the bottom side of the basin, 38 copper
tubes of 1.5 cm outer diameter were carefully arranged and submerged
under three liters of tap water. Depending on the desired R-value, some
of the tubes were filled with PCM and the remaining tubes were left
empty. In each experiments, all the 38 tubes were always used and the
only thing changes is the number of PCM filled tubes to investigate the
effect of the amount of PCM on the water productivity. The PCM ca-
pacity of each tube is 40 g and the PCM filled tubes were tightly sealed
to prevent water from leaking in or PCM from leaking out of the tubes.
All tubes were painted with a black color to maximize the solar irra-
diation absorption.
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the solar still integrated with PCM tubes, used in
this work.
H. Mousa, et al. Journal of Energy Storage 26 (2019) 100959

Fig. 2. Locations of the thermocouple sensors in the experiment.

2.1. Data collection

In this work, a thermocouple device (SD logger, type k) was used to

Fig. 3. The change in PCM, water and ambient temperatures and the irradiation
record different temperatures during each experiment. Fig. 2 shows a
intensity on April 26, 2018. R = 0.51, mw = 3 kg.
schematic diagram of the thermocouples locations to collect tempera-
tures readings. Thermocouple sensors were connected inside the basin
to measure water temperature (Tw), PCM temperatures (Tpcm), vapor
temperature (Tv), and outside to collect ambient temperature (Ta). The
device was set to record temperature every 2 min. This kind of ther-
mocouple has good specification and works at a high temperature.

2.2. Experimental procedure

The experiments were carried out from April to August 2018 in

Muscat-Oman. Each set of experiment was conducted within four con-
secutive days for the four desired values of the parameter R (0, 0.17,
0.35 and 0.51) which is defined as Mass of PCM . The experiments typi-
Mass of Water
cally start from 8:30 a.m. until the next day 7:30 a.m. The collected
water (condensate) was recorded every one hour until 12:00 a.m. and
the accumulated water produced after 12 a.m. is recorded the next day
morning. After each experiment, the pH and conductivity of the col-
lected water were measured and recorded and the recorded tempera-
tures data (basin water, ambient, PCM, and vapor) were extracted from Fig. 4. The change in PCM, water and ambient temperatures and the irradiation
intensity on May 30, 2018. R = 0.51, mw = 3 kg.
the temperature recorder and analyzed using excel. Table 1 shows the
number of PCM filled tubes, mass of PCM and the value of R for each set
of four experiments. The mass of the water is constant and equals 3 kg
and its electrical conductivity is 869.6 μS/cm.

3. Results and discussion

In this work, several experiments were conducted in the interval of

April to August 2018 in Muscat-Oman. In each experiment, the amount
of PCM used was varied to investigate the effect of PCM on the tem-
perature change of the solar still. The variation in the temperature of
the PCM and the water for R = 0.51 for the months of April, May, June
and July is shown in Figs. 3–7 respectively. The ambient temperature is
also shown in these figures. The above figures also show the effect of
the irradiation intensity on the temperature variation. Five different
zones can be identified in these figures. Zone I in which T increases till
the melting point of the PCM (∼45 °C) is reached. Zone II in which the
energy received is utilized to melt the PCM. This zone is also called the
Fig. 5. The change in PCM, water and ambient temperatures and the irradiation
Table 1 intensity on June 6, 2018. R = 0.51, mw = 3 kg.
Number of PCM filled tubes, mass of PCM and R for each set of experiments.
The mass of water is 3 kg.
charging zone [2,20,27]. It is expected that the temperature should
Experiment number Number of PCM filled Mass (PCM) R=
Mass of PCM remain constant in this zone but because the heating rate is faster than
tubes (kg) Mass of Water
the melting rate, the temperature slightly rises with time. Zone II
1 0 0 0
continues till complete melting of the PCM takes place at which Zone III
2 13 520 g 0.17 starts. In Zone III T continues to rise reaching a maximum value at
3 26 1040 g 0.35 which the solar irradiation is maximum and then starts to drop due to
4 38 1520 g 0.51 the decrease in the solar irradiation and due to heat losses from the

3
H. Mousa, et al. Journal of Energy Storage 26 (2019) 100959

Fig. 6. The change in PCM, water and ambient temperatures and the irradiation
intensity on July 18, 2018. R = 0.51, mw = 3 kg. Fig. 8. Water temperature versus time for R values of 0, 0.17, 0.35 and 0.51.
The experiments were conducted on 27, 28, 29 and 30 May 2018. The amount
of the water in the basin is 3 kg. The average irradiation intensity is 956 W/m2.

that as the amount of PCM increases (larger values of R), the constant
temperature zones becomes longer. This can be clearly noticed in the
discharging zone where the temperature remains constant for 0 min,
54 min, 88 min and 116 min when R values are 0, 0.17, 0.35 and 0.51
respectively. This is expected since more heat is released as R increases
keeping the temperature constant for longer time.
The effect of PCM on the fresh water production is depicted in
Table 3. As can be seen the presence of the PCM reduces the production
during the day time (sunrise to sunset). As more PCM is present in the
system, more energy is needed to heat and then melt the PCM. Ac-
cordingly, the water temperature decreases as more PCM is present.
This reduces the unit production. However more fresh water is pro-
duced during the night time (sunset to sunrise next day) and this is
because more stored energy is released when the amount of PCM is
Fig. 7. PCM temperature versus time for R values of 0.17, 0.35 and 0.51. The
increased. Therefore, water temperature is increased and remains so for
experiments were conducted on 28, 29 and 30 May 2018. The amount of water longer time which enhances evaporation and hence production (see
in the basin is 3 kg. The average irradiation intensity is 956 W/m2. Fig. 8). The net effect is such that the total amount of produced fresh
water is reduced as the amount of PCM increases. Fig. 9 portrays the
production during the day time, night time and the total production for
Table 2
the various values of R. Careful examination of Fig. 9 indicates that the
The average irradiation intensity and the average temperature of the PCM,
production may starts to increase at values of R greater than 0.32. In
water and ambient temperature measured over the period of 24 h. R = 0.51.
this work values of R greater than 0.51 was not examined which worth
Date of the Q PCM average Water average Ambient average testing in the future to verify this point. This suggests that a minimum
experiment (W/ temperature (°C) temperature (°C) temperature (°C)
fresh water production versus R may exist. Therefore, based on the
m2 )
objective required (high temperature for long time or fresh water pro-
April 26, 2018 865 51.0 49.4 38.0 duction the value of R is chosen. It worth pointing out that in previous
May 30, 2018 956 56.2 54.3 42.5 theoretical investigations a similar conclusion was obtained [27–34].
June 6, 2018 921 53.0 51.9 40.8
On the other hand, Yousef and Hassan [35] found that the day time
July 18, 2018 874 53.8 51.9 43.3
production is not significantly affected by the presence of PCM however
the night time and the overall production increases as the amount of
system. Once the temperature drops to the melting point of the PCM the PCM increases. Obviously a solid conclusion regarding this point cannot
solidification process starts (Zone IV). In Zone IV, also called the dis- be made at this stage and further theoretical and experimental
charging zone [2,20,27], the temperature remains constant because the
energy lost from the system is subsidized by the heat of fusion of the
PCM. Unlike the charging zone the temperature remains constant in the Table 3
Summary of the amount of fresh water produced for various values of R. The
discharging zone since the rate of heat loss is slow because the system is
experiments were conducted on 27, 28, 29 and 30 May 2018. The amount of the
well insulated from all of its sides except the top side. Hence there is
water in the basin is 3 kg. The average irradiation intensity is 956 W/m2.
enough time for the energy to be provided to the system by the soli-
dification process causing T to remain constant in this zone. Once the R Day time production Night time production Total production (ml)
(ml) (ml)
solidification process is completed the discharging zone (Zone IV) ends
and zone V starts where T drops due to heat loss from the system. The 0 557 70 627
average temperatures of the measured data are presented in Table 2. 0.17 540 90 630
The effect of the amount of PCM on the temperature variation of the 0.35 430 115 545
0.51 410 140 550
PCM and the water is shown in Figs. 7 and 8 respectively. It can be seen

4
H. Mousa, et al.
Fig. 9. Fresh water production during the day time, night time and total pro-
duction versus the amount of PCM. The experiments were conducted on 27, 28,
29 and 30 May 2018. The amount of the water in the basin is 3 kg. The average
irradiation intensity is 956 W/m2.
investigation is still needed. The day time, night time and the overall
production depends on the value of R, Q, the way the PCM is impeded
into the solar basin, the type of the PCM which determines its melting
point, heat of fusion, and other physical properties and rate of heat loss
from the system.
4. Conclusions
Presence of PCM in the solar water basin leads to the appearance of
two zones namely charging and discharging zones. Higher heating rate
compared to the melting rate of the PCM causes the temperature in the
charging zone to increase with time. The temperature in the dischar-
ging zone, however, remains constant since the rate of solidification is
equal to the rate of heat loss from the system which is well insulated.
The length of the above mentioned zones, particularly the solidification
zone, increases as the amount of PCM increases.
Fresh water production is strongly affected by the presence of PCM.
The amount of fresh water produced during the day time is inversely
proportional to the amount of PCM. However, the amount of fresh
water produced during the night time is proportional to the amount of
PCM. The net amount of fresh water produced suggests that a minimum
amount of production may exist. This point still needs further in-
vestigation.
Declaration of Competing Interest
This to certify that there is no conflict of interest in the article
submitted entitled
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