Research Projects

Due to industrialization and increasing worldwide population, the demand for freshwater is increasing daily, therefore, considered a crucial issue worldwide, especially in remote and arid areas. Specifically, the shortage of freshwater poses a big problem in India, where most of the available water, underground or seawater, is not appropriate for household needs, i.e., drinking and cooking. In India, solar energy is available in abundance and receives high or good. Among all the water purification methods available in the literature, solar distillation appears as one of the promising technologies to produce a bulk amount of freshwater from saline water or seawater with minimum cost. In literature, most of the studies were about a plane still with heat storage material like pebbles, PCM (phase change material), and porous materials to enhance performance. Also, most researchers used a fan to improve heat transfer inside the pool. The literature shows that introducing heat storage materials inside the pyramid-type solar still improves performance and productivity. However, heat transfer from the top surface of the pool to the heat storage material (placed inside the basin) is low because (a) water has low thermal conductivity and (b) the convection current effect is also low. To promote heat transfer, some researchers have placed a fan inside the pool, which requires power input to the fan. Numerous experimental and numerical studies have been performed in the literature to understand and simulate the phase change process of a single slope and pyramid solar still. Further, with a view to augmenting the thermal performance of a pyramid solar, several strategies and techniques can be explored experimentally and numerically using metal foams, fins, nano-particles, metallic PCMs, Thermosyphon, etc. Most of the studies are focused only on the Thermosyphon based solar still for productivity enhancement. Investigations on pulsating heat pipe based hybrid pyramid solar still have not been adequately addressed in the literature though they have the potential to significantly augment heat transfer and thereby improve the yield. Therefore, the present proposal aims to develop a novel hybrid pyramid solar still with the systemic joining of the pulsating heat pipe and Phase Change Material (PCM). Further, fins will be added inside the PCM to distribute the heat load uniformly and effectively utilize the PCM latent heat. The present proposal will systematically join the pulsating heat pipe with the pyramidal solar. The experiments will be conducted on pyramidal solar still (i) with a heat pipe with various working fluids, namely, water, acetone, methanol, ethanol, and binary fluids, (ii) different water levels in the basin, (iii) with PCM below the basin along with the fins. Finally, the feasibility effect of orientation of PHP on overall performance of novel solar still will be checked.