Conical cement fins efficacy on single slope solar distillers performance—Experimental investigation with economic analysis

Abstract

This article presents an effective, economical, and health-safe experimental work to improve the solar distiller's performance using cement conical fins. To demonstrate the effectiveness of conical cement fins, two distillers were designed and built, in the first distiller; a basin was made from cement (SSSD-CB). In the second distiller, the uniformly distributed cement conical fins are installed in the basin (SSSD-CB&CCF). The results presented that the cumulative water produced from SSSD-CB and SSSD-CB&CCF reached 3460 and 4750 mL/m² day, respectively. These results indicated that the conical cement fins represent a good design that improves the yield by 37.28%. Also, the average improvement in the exergy and energy efficiencies for SSSD-CB&CCF reached 71.24% and 37.3%. The economic analysis showed that using conical cement fins reduced distilled costs by 25.38%.