article · Results in Engineering
Solar stills offer a practical method for producing clean freshwater for drinking and cultivation using solar energy, especially in developing regions facing ongoing water shortages. A common limitation of conventional solar stills is their modest evaporation rate. Reviewing various design enhancements reveals that introducing turbulence into the basin water significantly improves productivity. Inducing turbulence breaks the thermal boundary layer between the water and the still surface, shifting the process from free evaporation to forced evaporation. Specific approaches reviewed include spraying units, air bubbles, vibratory harmonic effects, mechanical stirring, rotating parts, and ultrasonic foggers. Reported results show marked yield increases across these methods, with ultrasonic foggers achieving the highest productivity at 6270 millilitres per square metre daily, representing an 83.87 percent enhancement, while spraying and stirring also delivered substantial gains in output.
Clean water remains a critical challenge in developing nations. Solar stills provide a technically feasible, sun-powered method to produce freshwater for drinking and agriculture, but low output has constrained their wider use. Identifying effective ways to induce water turbulence allows researchers and water system designers to significantly increase evaporation rates, helping to create more productive decentralised desalination devices for communities with limited infrastructure.
This review covers applied research that could assist equipment manufacturers and development agencies designing improved decentralised desalination units for off-grid drinking or agricultural use. The data benchmarks the performance of various retrofits, such as ultrasonic foggers and spraying units. Because the findings derive from laboratory and prototype studies reported in academic literature, the featured technologies appear to sit at an applied testing stage rather than as turnkey commercial products.
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In everyday living, the need for fresh water is crucial. The most pressing problem in developing nations is the ongoing lack of access to clean water. In many ways, the solar still is a great source of freshwater for both drinking and cultivation, it is one of the most popular essential and technically practicable sun energy uses. This study lists studies on solar stills with different methods of creating turbulence to enhance solar stills productivity in an effort to offer a full picture of current scientific advancements. These methods serve to induce turbulence in basin water and break the thermal boundary layer between still surface and water to enhance the evaporation. The use of turbulence devices converts free evaporation to forced evaporation, which increases the evaporation rate. Spraying unit, air bubbles, vibratory harmonic effect, stirring turbulence, rotating parts and ultrasonic fogger were used to create water turbulence. Diverse results (productivity and enhancement) demonstrated shown the importance of spraying unit (5400 mL/m2/day −56%), air bubbles (5490 mL/m2/day–21.96%), stirring turbulence (5400 mL/m2/day −39.49%), and ultrasonic fogger (6270 mL/m2/day– 83.87%). The benefit of this review is that it will allow for a systematic understanding of the role and influence of each thermal-methods on the daily productivity rate using various turbulence techniques.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.rineng.2023.101251
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