Abstract

One of the basic requirements for every human being is the availability of clean drinking water, but about 1.1 billion people in the world lacked pure drinking water. Thfere several types of water purification processes used worldwide such as filtration, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet radiation, carbon absorption, but distillation and boiling is considered to be the most reliable among these process. In areas where water resources or tap water is not suitable for drinking without boiling or chemical treatment Water purification, such as distillation, plays an important role in providing clean drinking water. Distillation is the common method usually seen in nature in which the water on earth is heated by sun and then converted into a vapor (evaporation) and rises, leaving behind contaminants, to form clouds. The vapor converts back to water after it cools when the temperature in the upper atmosphere drops.

Water is essential for life. The origin and continuance of mankind is based on water. Developing countries face a significant problem in the supply of drinking water. With the increasing population and industrial growth and agricultural activities causes depletion of many fresh water resources due to rapid increase in need for energy and to overcome environmental concerns much attention is focused on renewable energy resources. Solar distillation is one of the non-conventional methods to desalinate brackish water or sea water. This work focuses on an experimental investigation by comparing the performance of two solar stills such as rectangular shape and basin shape solar still, with photo catalyst and reflector base solar still. The comparative performance study is analyzed for the same weather conditions with different design parameters and some important conclusions were assigned.

Keywords: Drinking water; Photo catalyst; Rectangular shape basin; Weather conditions