Solar distillation is an efficient, economical, environmental and simple method to fight against the demand for drinking water in North African countries. For this, four similar solar stills were tested under the same conditions in order to see the effect of the diameter of the plastic fins (tubes) on the yield. The first reference of a solar still (RSS) is taken as a control, i.e., without fins, the three other modified solar stills MSS1, MSS2 and MSS3 each have 36 plastic fins (tubes) whose corresponding diameters are d1 = 0.5cm, d2 = 1cm and d3 = 1.5cm. The results reveal that the productivity decreases whenever the diameter of the fins increases. This is due to the force of surface tension between the inside and the outside of the plastic tube. The improvement rates of these three modified distillers MSS1, MSS2 and MSS3 are 43.22%, 21.98% and 12.82%, respectively.

solar energy, solar distillation, polluted water, water treatment.

Received: May 7, 2022; Revised: May 11, 2022; Accepted: June 1, 2022; Published: July 15, 2022

How to cite this article: Donia Djaballah, Boubaker Benhaoua and Abderrahmane Khechekhouche, Surface tension force effect on the solar still output, JP Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 28 (2022), 165-176. http://dx.doi.org/10.17654/0973576322040

This Open Access Article is Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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