Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Materials Today: Proceedings

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An unsteady CFD modelling of a single slope solar still

Gaurav Mittal
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Graphic Era Deemed to be University, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: An unsteady CFD modelling of a single slope solar still is done using ANSYS Fluent. In the model, only the
Received 6 January 2021 humid zone (air + water vapour mixture) is considered with specified temperatures at the bottom (water)
Received in revised form 30 January 2021 and top (glass) level. The boundary conditions of temperature are specified for 24-hour duration, and the
Accepted 4 February 2021
unsteady simulations are also conducted for 24-hour duration. Evaporation and condensation rates are
Available online xxxx
derived based on water vapour mass fraction gradient at the evaporating (bottom) and condensing
(top) surfaces. A number of User Defined Functions (UDFs) are used to implement this approach. The
Keywords:
approach gives instantaneous as well as daily distillate output. The approach is computationally non-
Solar still
CFD
expensive and can help in evaluating the distillate output from a variety of configurations when temper-
Distillate yield atures at the bottom and top surfaces are known.
Ó 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Confer-
ence on Technological Advancements in Materials Science and Manufacturing.

1. Introduction
Single slope solar stills are very simple configurations that are
used to obtain distilled water from brine [1–4]. These stills typi-
cally employ a glass cover at the top and water basin at the bottom.
Glass is almost transparent to the incoming solar radiation. The
transmitted radiation is captured by the water basin, which heats
water. The opacity of glass to longer wavelength thermal radiation
from the basin prevents escape of thermal radiation from the top
cover. This is the greenhouse effect. The top glass surface loses heat
to surrounding by convection and thermal radiation and remains at
lower temperature than the basin and thus serves the purpose of
the condensing surface. Water vapours rise from the basin due to
natural convection and condense at the top surface. The distillate
glides along the top cover and is gathered in a side channel.
The effect of various configurations on still productivity has
been studied experimentally and computationally [e.g. 1–6]. CFD
simulations offer cost effective means of exploration. CFD studies
are mostly done for 2 D configurations and sometimes for 3D [1–
8]. In addition, some approaches are based on prescribing the tem-
peratures at the bottom and top surfaces as the boundary condi-
tion, whereas more elaborate approaches include radiation also
in the modelling and do away with the specification of tempera-
tures as boundary conditions. These approaches are computation-
ally more demanding. In this work, as a first step, the modelling is
E-mail address: gauravmittal@geu.ac.in
done only for the humid (water + air mixture) zone inside the still
with specified temperatures as boundary conditions. The model is
implemented in ANSYS Fluent and simulation are done for entire
day to obtain daily distillate yield. The computational details and
results are described in the following sections.
2. Computational modelling
The 2D geometry of the single slope solar still was taken from
[8]. The still has a width of 75 cm. The height on the left side is
8 cm and the inclination angle of glass cover is 30o : The computa-
tional grid is shown in Fig. 1. The profiles of temperature specified
at the bottom and top surfaces are shown in Fig. 2. The tempera-
ture profiles are based on [6]. The other boundary conditions are
as follows. Side walls are insulated, and zero gradient for species,
and no slip for momentum is specified. At the top and bottom sur-
faces, saturated air is assumed due to the condensation and evap-
oration, respectively. Thus, the mass fraction of water vapour
corresponding to the saturated air at the surface temperature is
specified at the bottom and top surfaces. The specification of
unsteady boundary conditions for temperature and water vapour
mass fraction is done by using UDFs.
The continuity, momentum, species transport and energy equa-
tion are solved in the domain. RNG k
 model turbulence model
is used. Humid air is treated as an ideal gas and thermophysical
properties of air and water vapour are taken from [9].

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2021.02.090
2214-7853/Ó 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Technological Advancements in Materials Science and
Manufacturing.

Please cite this article as: G. Mittal, An unsteady CFD modelling of a single slope solar still, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
matpr.2021.02.090
G. Mittal
Fig. 1. Computational domain and grid distribution.
Fig. 2. Specified temperature boundary conditions.
Rates of evaporation and condensation during each iteration are
determined by using UDF which integrates the gradient of vapour
mass fraction over the bottom and top surface, respectively.
R !
Evaporation rate, m _ e ¼
qDm rY: dA where integration is
over the bottom surface.
R !
Condensation rate, m_ c ¼ qDm rY: dA where integration is over
the top surface.
Molecular diffusivity in the moist air zone is calculated as
Fig. 3. Hourly and cumulative distillate yield over an entire day.
2
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  3
101325 T 2
Dm ¼ 2:6x10
5
P 298
A UDF is used to specify diffusivity based on above equation.
The governing equations are discretized using second order
upwind scheme for momentum, continuity, species, energy and
turbulence. Second order implicit method is used for temporal dif-
ferencing. Pressure Staggering scheme is used for pressure interpo-
lation along with SIMPLE algorithm.
The unsteady calculations are done for 24 h duration. A uniform
temperature of 302 K and saturated air at rest at 7 am are specified
as the initial condition. In order to ensure time step and grid size
independence, simulations were conducted for time step range of
3 to 10 s on computational grids having 12,150 to 42,000 cells.
For all grid distributions, boundary layer in the moist air zone
was refined using 15 layers of ‘inflation’ with the cells near wall
having size of 0.2 mm. Resolution of the boundary layer is critical
as evaporation and condensation rates depend on the gradients
in the boundary layer. The difference in the simulated daily distil-
late yield between the smallest time step and grid size and largest
was less than 1%.
3. Results
The simulations were conducted for 24-hour duration begin-
ning from 7 am till 7 am of the next day using the specified tem-
peratures as the boundary conditions. Fig. 3 shows the simulated
instantaneous distillate yield as well as the cumulative daily yield.
Yield is calculated from condensation rate as follows.
_c
Instantaneous distillate yield ðkg=m2
hrÞ ¼ m
 3600=Basin area
The instantaneous yield increases as the temperature of the
bottom surface as well as the temperature difference between
the top and bottom surface increase. This is due to an increase in
the water vapour mass fraction as well as convection current.
The instantaneous distillate output peaks around 3 pm and
decreases thereafter as temperature decreases.
The simulated velocity field and streamlines, at 2 pm are shown
in Fig. 4. Three vortical structures, generated due to natural con-
vection, can be seen in the streamlines. An interesting feature is
that the surface of the glass cover is traversed by two vortices
which rotate in opposed directions. This may be detrimental for
distillate yield because the clockwise spinning of left side vortex
can potentially disrupt the flow of distillate down the slope of
the glass cover and can induce falling of droplets into the water
G. Mittal Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 4. Simulated results at 2 pm. (a) velocity field (b) streamlines.

Fig. 5. Simulated results at 2 pm. (a) temperature field (b) density field (c) mass fraction of water vapour.

3
G. Mittal
Fig. 6. Mass fraction of water vapour at 2 pm along (a) vertical line through centre of the still (b) horizontal line at a height of 4 cm from bottom (c) zoomed view along
horizontal line near left side wall (d) zoomed view along horizontal line near right side wall.
pool. Such effects cannot be examined within the framework of the
present CFD model.
The simulated temperature field, density field and mass fraction
of water vapour at 2 pm are shown in Fig. 5. It is noted that the
humid air at the bottom surface has lower density and higher mass
fraction of water than at the top surface. Low density air rises from
the bottom surface and transports vapour with it, which in turn,
condense at the top surface. A plot of water vapour mass fraction
along a vertical line through the centre of the still at 2 pm is shown
in Fig. 6(a). In the fig., sharp gradient in vapour mass fraction near
the bottom and top surfaces can be seen. These gradients are
responsible for evaporation and condensation, respectively.
Vapour mass fraction along a horizontal line at a height of 4 cm
from the bottom surface is shown in Fig. 6(b). A higher mass frac-
tion near the left wall is due to upward flow of air along this sur-
face, which carries moist air from the bottom surface. Fig. 6(c)
and (d) show zoomed views near left and right wall along the hor-
izontal line. These are included to enforce that the zero gradient of
species mass fraction is indeed satisfied and the boundary layer is
well resolved.
4. Concluding remarks
A CFD model was implemented to model a single slope solar
still using ANSYS Fluent. A number of User Defined Functions were
written to do it. The model uses unsteady boundary conditions of
temperature at the top and bottom surface as input and provides
distillate yield for an entire day. Apart from the implementation
of the model, the issues of mesh and time step independence were
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addressed. In addition, sample simulation shows that the model
does describe the features of flow inside the still very well. It is a
valuable tool to explore various configurations that differ in geo-
metrical parameters, arrangement of baffles and so on, and
attempt to optimize still for high yield.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Gaurav Mittal: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software,
Investigation, Writing – reviewing & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
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G. Mittal
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