Abstract—The objective of this paper is to investigate the
operation of multi-effect water still coupled to an evacuated
heat pipe tube solar collector and small fluid piston energy
converter. The solar collector is used to provide heating of the
saline water in the still and also to drive the fluid piston
converter. This converter operates as a pump to evacuate air
from the still and reduce pressure inside the still which would
result in the increased saline water evaporation rate. The
mathematical model of operation of the proposed water
desalination system was developed using a set of equations to
describe the mass and energy balance for each stage of the still.
A simulation was carried out in Matlab/Simulink environment
in order to calculate the distillate productivity and
temperatures in all stages of the still. The preliminary results
demonstrate that the total productivity of the multi-effect still
is strongly affected by the pressure inside the still. Currently,
the physical model of the system being assembled on the test
rig to validate theoretical results.
Index Terms—Fluid piston converter, multi-effect water
solar still, solar desalination, solar energy.
Nabil Elsharif and Khamid Mahkamov are with Mechanical and
Construction Department, Faculty of Engineering and Environment,
Northumbria University at Newcastle, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK (e-mail:
nabil.elsharif@northumbria.ac.uk).
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Cite:Nabil Elsharif and Khamid Mahkamov, "Multi-Effect Solar Water Still with Evaporation Pressure Self-Reduction Capability," Journal of Clean Energy Technologies vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 139-142, 2018.
