Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department-College of Engineering-Sultan Qaboos University
Water is one of mankind's most valuable resources and it is a precious gift of nature. As the population of the world is growing there is an ever-increasing demand for good quality water for both domestic and industrial use. Therefore, worldwide scientists and engineers are pursing research to obtain less expensive and less complicated methods treating it. Solar distillation is an attractive process for the purification of sea water. Inverted solar stills are simple in design, manufacture, operation and use free energy. However, the low productivity of fresh water is the biggest challenge and limits its application. Therefore scientists are working hard to find ways to enhance their productivity. Several investigators studied many factors that affect the solar stills to enhance their productivities. This work presents experimental results obtained using a comparison between a standard inverted solar still and refrigerated inverted solar still (i.e., the same system, but the refrigerated system was added to them). The experiments were conducted in the Sultanate of Oman, using sea water at different inlets temperatures and depths. An optimum production was found at the inlet temperature of 30° C, depth of6 cm for the refrigerated system and of 30° C, depth 2 cm for the standard system. The results show that water production by refrigerated system is higher than the standard one