Comparison between solar distillers with and without solar concentrator

Abstract

In order to desalinate sea water by only solar energy using they were designed and built three distillers in which experimental measurements were taken to calculate production, performance and cost. Distillers by solar concentration are: a parabolic trough distiller (PTD) and a Fresnel linear distiller (FLD), and a stepped basin distiller (SBD). As a result, fresh water production under similar climatic conditions was 990 cm3/m2/day with an efficiency of 45.8% for the PTD, 855 cm3/m2/day with 38% of efficiency for the FLD and 5910 cm3/m2/day with an efficiency of 4.4% for the SBD. That is, although the SBD has 10 times lower efficiency than the PTD, it produces almost 6 times more fresh water per m2 of distiller’s surface. Regarding the cost of production of each liter of desalinated water, it was calculated in € 0.086, € 0.103 and € 0.034 for the PTD, FLD and SBD, respectively.