Experimental investigation and thermodynamic performance analysis of a solar distillation system with PCM storage: Energy and exergy analysis

Abstract

This article presents the experimental performance investigation of solar still integrated with two types of phase change materials namely Lauric acid and Myristic acid independently, used as storage medium of solar energy. The experiments were performed during the months of April-May 2011, under Indian climatic conditions. The effect of input parameters such as mass of water in basin and mass of phase change material integrated with solar still basin on productivity of the solar still has been studied. Also on the basis of the experimental data the values of exergy and energy were calculated. It has been found that (i) productivity of solar still integrated with Lauric acid is 22% more than the solar still integrated with Myristic acid. (ii) the energy efficiencies for solar still integrated with Lauric acid and Myristic acid are found to be 39.6% and 34.4% where as exergy efficiencies values are 0.29% and 0.74% respectively (iii) the cost of using Lauric acid is lesser than using Myristic acid for same amount of productivity. © 2017, Taylor and Francis Inc. All rights reserved.