ABSTRACT
This experiment aimed to determine the impact of water temperature and basin depth on distillate production and the thermal efficiency of the single-slope solar still. For this, experimentation has been performed on the environmental condition of India in the south-facing of single slope solar still having inclination angle 230. The water depths were varied from 3cm to 12cm and water temperature from 300C to 600C to see its impact on distillate output, and thermal efficiency. This study also focuses on optimizing the process parameters through Taguchi’s parameter design approach. The parameters considered to be optimized water depth, water temperature, which strongly affect the productivity distillate output of solar distillation. The distillate output and the thermal efficiency for water depths (3 to 12cm) and water temperature 300C to 600C were noted as 0.727, 0.628, 0.617, 0.634 l/hr. and 45.11, 41.29, 36.67, and 39.02% respectively. The experimental findings obtained under optimal circumstances, in addition, were in excellent agreement with the anticipated optimal responses. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) shows that basin water temperature has more effect in the formation of distillate output in solar distiller than basin depth water. However, it is concluded from the result of the analysis that the distilled output is mainly influenced by basin water temperature in the Solar still.
