Desalination xxx (xxxx) 116276

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Desalination
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/desal

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Productivity augmentation of a solar distiller utilizing a wire mesh absorber
with a pulsed flow regime

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Emad M.S. El-Said a, *, Mohamed A. Dahab b, M. Abdelgaleel b, Gamal B. Abdelaziz b, ⁎
a Faculty of Engineering, Damietta University, Damietta, Egypt
b Faculty of Technology and Education, Suez University, Suez 43512, Egypt

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ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: This work introduces an experimental study on the possibility of using the metal wire mesh as a packed absorber
Water desalination (SS-WM) with pulsed water flow to enhance the performance of the solar distiller experimentally. The utilization
Solar radiation of a wire mesh increases the absorptive surface area over the traditional absorber. The experimental model was
Solar still
designed, manufactured, and tested under actual climatic conditions. Numerous system performance variables,
Thermo-economic analysis
including sprayer feed water flow rate (FWFR), pulsed water flow operation frequency, and packed absorber pa-
Wire mesh
Economic study rameters (size and number of wire mesh layers), were evaluated based on thermodynamic, economic, and water
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production assessments. Results show that the packed absorber in SS-WM enhances thermal energy absorption
and storage. The water yield is enhanced by about 102 % by using the small size of wire mesh and 30 % and 41 %
for medium and large sizes, respectively. The best performance enhancement of SS-WM is reached by using two
layers with enhancement in the water yield, average thermal efficiency, and cost by about 102 %, 102 %, and
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44 %, respectively, compared to traditional design. The water yield, average thermal efficiency, and freshwater
cost are about 3.007 l/d, 45 %, and 0.008 USD/l respectively.

PC product cost, USD

Nomenclature w uncertainties
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x independent variables
Latin symbols L latent heat of vaporization, kJ/kg
ER enhancement ratio, dimensionless
A area, m2
CFR capital recovery factor, % Greek symbols
I solar heat flux, W/m2
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hourly mass flow rate, kg/s η efficiency, dimensionless

Nu Nusselt number
t time, h Subscripts
T temperature, °C
TC total cost of ownership, USD s sun
n life expectancy, year w water
f availability, % a ambient
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i annual base rate, % o out

FC fixed cost, USD in in
OC operating cost, USD evap evaporation
MC maintenance cost, USD Is solar intensity
CC capital cost, USD H hourly

⁎ Corresponding author.
* corresponding author
E-mail addresses: emspeng@gmail.com (E.M.S. El-Said), gbedair@ind.suezuni.edu.eg (G.B. Abdelaziz).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2022.116276
Received 13 August 2022; Received in revised form 17 November 2022; Accepted 21 November 2022
0011-9164/© 20XX

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E.M.S. El-Said et al. Desalination xxx (xxxx) 116276

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Fig. 1. SS-WM desalination system; (a) Schematic diagram, (b) Photo.

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Fig. 2. Wire mesh types and specifications.

Table 1 Table 2
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Technical characteristics. Uncertainty.

Sensor or probe Least Mark Quantity Accuracy Measurement Uncertainty
count
Temperature (°C) ±0.43
Power meter; (TM-207) 0.1 W/m2 Tenmars Solar radiation ±4 % Air velocity (m/s) ±0.02
Thermocouples; (type K) 1 °C Zhejiang Temperature ±1 %
Anemometer; (GM8908) 0.1 m/s MC Wind speed ±4 % Uncertainties in calculation
Water flow sensor; (YF- 0.50 Sea Flow rate ±2 % Thermal efficiency (%) 0.5–2.4
S201) Productivity (%) 2–5
Calibrated jar (0–2000 ml) 0 CC – Water ±0.88 %
production

D daily
d destructed
t time
tf trough

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E.M.S. El-Said et al. Desalination xxx (xxxx) 116276

Table 3 massive plant or installation of costly transportation by pipelines or ve-

Detailed cost of SS-WH system. hicles [19,20]. Solar stills SS are considered one of the sustainable ways
Item Price (USD) to produce desalinated water due to their design, implementation, and
maintenance simplicity [21–24]. Currently, most of the researchers are
Wooden box 75 working widely to solve productivity problems in SS to be more effi-
Glass cover 35
cient in water distillers than in traditional design [25–38]. Recently, a
Copper basin 70
lot of trials to improve solar still productivity were performed via differ-
Aluminum basin 45
Valves and pipes 30 ent techniques like rotating drums, absorber stepping, using nano-
Insulation material 40 materials, paraffin wax, reflectors, and wicks [39–45]. Changing the
Water pump 25 condensing and absorbing surfaces from a flat surface is another trial to

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Installation and testing 45 improve condensation and evaporation rate and accordingly increase
Wire mesh 10
solar still production [46–53]. Two major obstacles stand in the way of
Painting 20
SS improved performance: increasing condensation efficiency and input

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Spray nozzle 15
Saline and fresh water bottles 20 energy absorption and storage. In the current study, the optimization of
Control unit and power supply 20 thermal energy gain is considered. Usage various kinds of sensible
Total cost of traditional design (SS-WM) 400 porous absorbers such as wire mesh can increase the heat and mass
Total cost of modified design (SS-T) 450 transfer processes inside the SS evaporation cavity. The physical shape
and material of wire mesh are made of a network of wires including
Table 4 pores, where water can flow through these pores. Krittacom et al. [54]
Test case conditions. used a stainless porous wire mesh placed on a solar air heater absorber

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Date Mesh No. of Feed water mass Operating Case code plate with various porosities. Their findings significantly enhanced the
size layers flow rate, l/m time, sec. convective heat transfer more than in cases without wire mesh. El-Said
et al. [55] studied a vibrating porous packed steel wire mesh to aug-
On Off
ment the performance of tubular SS. They found that the SS perfor-
15-04-2021 S 1 0.75 20 20 S1120/20 mance was improved by 34 % rather than a conventional design based
21-04-2021 S 2 1.5 20 20 S2220/20 on water yield with enhancement in efficiency by 42.31 %. Hansen et
24-04-2021 S 3 0.75 20 20 S3120/20 al. [56] conducted an experiment to determine the effectiveness of an
25-04-2021 S 3 1.5 20 20 S3220/20 inclined type SS with various wick materials (water coral fleece mater-
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26-04-2021 S 3 2.5 20 20 S3320/20
ial on various absorber plate designs) (flat absorber, stepped absorber,
28-04-2021 S 4 1.5 20 20 S4220/20
04-05-2021 S 4 2.5 20 20 S4320/20
and stepped absorber with wire mesh). Augmenting water coral fleece
05-05-2021 S 4 2.5 30 20 20S4330/ with a wire mesh–stepped absorber plate indicated that the maximum
daily production output in the SS was 4.28 kg. Sadineni et al. [57] stud-
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06-05-2021 S 4 2.5 40 20 S4340/20 ied a wire-type SS consisting of an inclined absorber plate formed to
08-05-2021 S 4 2.5 15 20 S4315/20 make wires, a top basin, and a bottom basin. They found that the yield
09-05-2021 S 4 2.5 10 20 S4310/20
of the wire-type SS is approximately 1.2 times higher. Younes et al. [58]
18-05-2021 L 2 2.5 20 20 L2320/20
19-05-2021 M 2 2.5 20 20 M2320/20 studied the performance of the tilted wick SS including three wick con-
figurations, flat, corrugated, and half a barrel. The measurements
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showed an increment of 100 % in the daily productivity for corrugated

in input
wick compared to conventional SS.
M modified
Pulsation was identified as an efficient augmentation method to im-
T traditional
prove heat transfer, distillate yield, and product quality [59]. Effect of
pulsation on heat transport has been studied experimentally, analyti-
Acronyms
cally, and numerically [60]. Habib et al. [60] analyzed the experimen-
tal characteristics of pulsating flow in a tube with uniform heat flux on
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SS solar still
the wall at frequencies ranging from 6.60 to 68.0 Hz. It has been
TF trough
demonstrated that Nusselt number Nu increases and falls as the fre-
TBSS triple basin solar still
quency and Reynolds number change. Li et al. [61] revealed that the
SS-WM solar still with wire mesh
global heat transfer coefficient in pulsating flow increases as the ampli-
SS-T solar still traditional
tude increases and with the decrease of frequency and Prandtl number.
FWFR feed water flow rate
Various investigations reveal that a decrease in the local Nusselt num-
PP performance parameter
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ber with a small amplitude was observed in the thermally entirely cre-
ated flow zone. However, a significant increment in Nu was detected.
According to the frequency, Nu of a pulsing internal flow may be
more than or less than Nu of a steady flow. El-Shazly et al. [62] ex-
1. Introduction
plored the use of pulsing liquid to enhance the efficiency of HDH units.
The increase in off time, or the frequency of pulsed water flows reduc-
Distillation is one of the methods of freshwater production used in
tion, up to a specified level, boosted the unit's production, as demon-
arid and remote regions where fresh water is scarce [1]. Thermal and
strated by their findings. In addition, they discovered that increasing
nonthermal desalination technologies are the two primary classifica-
the amplitude of water pulsation (water flow per pulse) boosted pro-
tions for desalination Experimental study of activated carbon as a
ductivity. El-Said and Abdelaziz [63] investigated the pulsing effect of
porous absorber in solar desalination with environmental. Nonthermal
using an ultrasonic wave atomizer to improve the performance of solar
processes include reverse osmosis [2], membrane distillation [3], and
still (SS). Several characteristics, including the number of atomizers,
forward osmosis [4]. Thermal approaches include solar-powered hu-
water level, the salinity of feed water, and on/off time were investi-
midification-dehumidification [5–8], solar membrane distillation, solar
gated. In comparison to continuous operation, their research revealed
pond distillation, and solar still [9–18]. The desalination units with
small capacity are considered a promising offer to reduce the need for a

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E.M.S. El-Said et al. Desalination xxx (xxxx) 116276

change material [66], nanoparticles [67], wicks [68], and other materi-
als [69].
This research experiment was carried out on a modified solar water
distiller with a wire mesh-packed absorber. The proposed system has
calculated the energy efficiency to evaluate the quantitative and quali-
tative thermal performance. Also, the water yield and production cost
were determined to assess the system's usage and economic feasibility.
So, the proposed system is manufactured and tested to reach the follow-
ing aims:

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1. Compare traditional and modified designs.
2. Assess the effect of the wire size and mesh specifications on the
performance.

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3. Evaluate the effect of the wire mesh with different layers on
absorbent surface effectiveness.
4. Perform the feasibility study of the system to determine the cost of
desalinated water as a promising solution to the fresh water crisis
in remote and arid areas.

2. Experimental work

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2.1. Experimental set-up

Fig. 1 shows the solar distiller SS-WM consists of five main parts,
the glass cover, the water basin, the wooden box, the water pump, and
the wire mesh as in the two figures. The glass cover is 4 mm thick and
tilts 30°, where the evaporated water is condensed on the inner surface
of the glass cover. The condensate water is collected with the produc-
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tivity pipe through which the water descends into the fresh water bot-
tle. The glass cover was fixed to allow for disassembly and installation
from time to time, and the installation of the study variables. The salt-
water basin is the same as a galvanized sheet of 1.5 mm to reduce heat
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losses lined on the walls of the wooden box, this was taken into ac-
count during the design to avoid leakage of the water to be desali-
nated. The wooden box is made of plywood, has a thickness of 2.5 cm,
dimensions 150 × 82 cm, and is coated with transparent varnish to
Fig. 3. Variation of solar intensity and ambient temperature with time. protect the device from sunlight and direct weather factors. The ab-
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sorbent surface and increasing the area are among the main factors in
that the thermal efficiency increased by around 72 % for on- increasing productivity. So, a multilayer packed absorber (from one to
time = 25 min and off-time = 25 min. four layers) made of wire mesh with different sizes and specifications,
One of the most essential factors in SS desalination is the tempera- see Fig. 2, was used and mounted on three inside walls to face the solar
ture difference between the water and condensation area, so to increase radiation. By using the proposed packed absorber, the largest possible
the temperature profile [64], a number of efficient materials have been solar radiations and long periods throughout the day are obtained. A
incorporated into the SS system, including porous material [65], phase pump with 0.5 hp is used to flow water from the SS-WM basin, the wa-
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Fig. 4. Variation of water temperature for traditional and wire mesh design with time.

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Fig. 5. Variation of glass temperature for traditional and modified design with time.

ter is sprayed on the wire mesh distributed on the inner sides of the SS where w1, w2, … are the independent variables uncertainties x1, x2,
in order to increase the evaporation process and thus increase the …
amount of desalinated water throughout the day. The pump is run to In this study, the small effects of some variables, such as salinity of
give a pulsed flow regime at varying intervals between 10, 15, 20, 30, feed water and speed of wind on the fresh water production were ne-
and 40 s. Constant off-time equals 20 s to increase the evaporation glected [71,72].
process. The basin's inner surface is painted black to increment the so-
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lar heat gain. As a thermal insulation material, 5 cm thick fiberglass in- 3. Performance analysis
sulation with thermal conductivity of 0.04 W/m.K is utilized to de-
crease heat losses from SS absorber to the ambient natural atmosphere. 3.1. First law (energy efficiency)
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2.2. Working principle The first law or energy efficiency based on hourly water yield ( )
is defined as the ratio of evaporation heat to water's absorbed heat [73]:
Based on Fig. 1(a), SS-WM was designed and manufactured accord-
ing to the Egyptian weather conditions, specifically in Suez city (lati- (2)
tude 29.8.7°N; longitude 32.5302°E, and altitude 10 m), the operating
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system for all operating experiments every 10 h from (07:00 AM to

5:00 PM), in all operating experiments. The solar still is fed with salt (3)
water using the feeding valve, controlling the required water depth,
which is constant at 2 cm for all test cases, and measuring the aquarium
where L represents the latent heat of vaporization through the phase
water temperatures, glass cover temperatures, atmospheric air temper-
shift at a constant temperature, [74]:
ature, and desalinated water productivity, all experiments measured
every hour. A unique mechanism carries out the evaporation process of
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the wire mesh, the water is regularly atomized on the wire mesh surface
between the 10, 15-, 20-, 30-, and 40-seconds spray operation and the a1 = 2.5 × 106, a2 = − 2.369 × 103, a3 = 2.678 × 10−1,
20 s stoppage to increase the water evaporation process, and thus the a4 = − 8.103 × 10−3, a5 = − 2.079 × 10−5.
distilled water.
3.2. Economic study
2.3. Instrumentation and uncertainty analysis
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Economic feasibility follows the methodology outlined by Kabeel et

The temperature is recorded hourly throughout the day using ther- al. [41]. As indicated in Table 3, the expected total fabrication costs for
mocouples K-type that have been previously calibrated and a digital the SS-WM system are 450 USD. The operation and maintenance costs
temperature meter. Solar radiation was measured by a solar power me- are considered to account for 5 % of fixed cost [33]. Assuming feed wa-
ter. Distillate water yield was manually recorded using a pre-calibrated ter does not require a preparation prior to desalination process; costs as-
measuring jar hourly. Wind velocity and temperature were measured. sociated with pretreatment are ignored [41]. By the loan repayment pe-
The utilized instruments in Table 1 met all technical standards. riod end, the units' salvage value is assumed as zero, and such capital
The uncertainty values according to [70] are shown in Table 2. goods are continually replaced throughout the system's lifetime [41].
The total price is calculated as follows:

(4)
The result uncertainties (wy) are estimated as follows:
OC represents operating costs and MC represents maintenance costs.
The fixed costs (FC) can be determined according to Eq. (7);
(1)

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Fig. 6. Variation of driving force and (TW-Tg) with time at different wire mesh layers and size.
(a) Number of wire mesh layers.(b) Wire mesh size.

(5)

CC represents all capital costs and CFR represents capital recovery

factor. CFR can be calculated as follows [41]:

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Fig. 7. Variation of instantaneous yield for traditional and modified design with time.
(a) Traditional design hourly yield.(b) Modified design hourly yield.

To calculate the enhancement on the thermal and economic perfor-

(6) mance parameters (PP) of modified to traditional systems the following
relation is used to determine the enhancement ratio (ER):
n represents the system life expectancy and i represents the yearly
rate (%). (8)
The desalinated water cost can be calculated according to Eq. (7) as:
4. Results analysis and discussions
(7)
Experimental setup was fabricated and tested in the climatic condi-
f represents the system availability. tions of Suez university, Suez, Egypt (29° 58′ 8.70″ N and 32° 31′ 48.83″
n and f are considered as 10 years and 93 % [75]. E). From 15 April to 19 May 2021, SS-WM's measurements starts at

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Fig. 8. Variation of accumulated yield for traditional and modified design with time.
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(a) Traditional design accumulated yield.(b) Modified design accumulated yield.

07:00 AM where results are hourly recorded from 08:00 AM to Figs. 4 and 5 depict the hourly changes in glass cover temperature
05:00 PM. Table 4 shows the test conditions and dates of the thirteen and water trough temperature for SS-T and SS-WM during operation.
cases. According to Fig. 4, the temperature of the water in the trough for tra-
ditional design SS-T increases with increasing solar radiation and
4.1. Temperature characteristics reaches its peak at 12:00. On the other hand, for modified design SS-
WM the temperature of the water in the trough reaches the maximum
Hourly changes in solar intensity and ambient temperature are value at 14:00. This figure shows that the water temperature for SS-T
shown in Fig. 3 throughout the operating time. In Fig. 3a, the solar in- has the same trend of solar radiation as shown in Fig. 3a. In contrast,
tensity increases from 08:00 to 11:00 and reaches the peak 12:00 and the water temperature continues to increase until 14:00. The improved
then decreases till 17:00. Fig. 3b shows that the ambient temperature design indicates that the change in water temperature lags after the
increases and records the peak values between 12:00 and 13:00. Then it change in solar intensity by approximately 2 h.
decreases to the operation day at 17:00. This delay is due to the heat absorbed by sensible heat storage based
on the metal wire mesh. This leads to heat accumulation inside the SS-

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Fig. 9. Effect of feed water flow rate on SS-WM performance compared to SS-T.

WM cavity and increased water temperature. As expected, the water tion in water production based on actual weather circumstances is com-
temperature begins to decrease due to a decrease in solar intensity. parable to solar radiation and water temperature. The wire mesh stor-
Throughout the day, the water temperature is higher in cases involving age capacity significantly affects the current system performance, so a
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more metal density, such as using more than three layers or small-size portion of the heat gained is kept as sensible energy. While solar radia-
wire mesh. tion drops, the heat and mass transfer mechanisms in the SS-WM cavity
Fig. 5 demonstrates that the maximum glass temperature value for continue, constantly converting the sensible thermal energy of the salty
the traditional SS-T design is lower than with a wire mesh with various water to the latent thermal energy of vapor. Therefore, the distillate
layers and sizes. Also, the hourly temperature differential between wa- yield of SS-WM reaches the peak value after solar radiation. In addition,
ter and glass cover is more significant in the SS with wire mesh than in as atmospheric temperature decreases after 13:00 the freshwater pro-
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the SS-T. In addition, this figure indicates that the glass temperature ductivity is improved, as illustrated in Fig. 3b, due to the reduction of
reaches the maximum value at 14:00 for SS-T and 13:00 for SS-WM. glass cover temperature to a value near the vapor saturation tempera-
This figure shows that the glass temperature for SS-T and SS-WM has ture, which increases the condensation rate. In SS-T, the evaporation
the same trend as water temperature, as shown in Fig. 4 with one hour process is initiated by heated water in the trough and a thin layer of wa-
shift. It means that the existing wire mesh has an apparent effect on ter. The presence of metal wire mesh in SS-WT improves heat absorp-
changing the heat and mass transfer in the evaporation zone. Fig. 6a tion and storage, hence enhancing water evaporation. The temporal
and b show the relation of the distillation driving force and differences temperature change of water results from the net heating energy re-
between water trough and glass cover temperatures at different layers ceived from the sun and the heat consumed in the evaporation process.
and types of wire mesh. Vapor adhering to the inner surfaces of walls and glass covers increases
as a result of the random motion. Following adhesion, vapor condenses
4.2. Water yield characteristics on walls, and glass covers the inside surface by releasing the vaporiza-
tion heat. Also, the water falling through the wire mesh disrupts the
The instantaneous and accumulated freshwater yields are measured boundary layer and surface tension of the salty water, hence enhancing
and presented as shown in Figs. 7 and 8 for SS-T and SS-WM, respec- heat transmission by convection. Consequently, the inclusion of wire
tively. By comparing Fig. 7 with Figs. 3a and 4, the trend of the varia- mesh increases the water vaporization rate, resulting in more produc-

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Fig. 10. Effect of wire mesh specifications on SS-WM performance compared to SS-T.

tivity than SS-T. The SS-WM records a maximum hourly water yield of 0.75 l/m to 1.5 l/m and then decrease by about 8.83 % when FWFR in-
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375 ml or 468 ml/m2 at 14:00 and a maximum daily water yield of crease by 1 l/m. This may be explained as: the low FWFR helps the wa-
3007 ml or 3758.75 ml/m2. ter droplet to be more attached to the wire mesh by decreasing the sur-
In the following sections, a detailed discussion will explain the effect face tension breakdown and creating a small droplet, without accumu-
of four operating parameters: feed water flow rate, wire mesh specifica- lation, more than high FWFR. Therefore, more contact time and small
tions, wire mesh layer number, and on/off operation time on the SS- droplet size can improve the evaporation rate, enhancing the system's
WM performance. The experimental data were utilized to determine the productivity. Under the test conditions, the optimum performance of
water yield, average thermal efficiency and freshwater production cost the SS-WM occurs at 1.5 l/m.
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of the SS-WM compared to SS-T using Eqs. (2)–(7). From the economic point of view, Fig. 9c shows that the cost reduc-
tion has the same trend as the yield and average thermal efficiency.
4.3. The effect of feed water flow rate Hence the lowest cost results in high productivity and thermal perfor-
mance. The best cost is about 0.01 USD/l with enhancement about 34 %
For evaluating the effect of flow rate of feed water on the S-WM pro- less than SS-T.
ductivity compared to SS-T, Fig. 9a–c shows the water yield, average
thermal efficiency, and freshwater production cost respectively with 4.4. Wire mesh specifications effect
constant wire mesh size, wire mesh layer number, and on/off time. Fig.
9a indicates that the FWFR variation affects the SS-WM productivity; In the current study, three sizes of wire mesh with different specifi-
the increase of FWFR from 0.75 l/m to 1.5 l/m decreases productivity cations are tested based on performance variables like water yield, av-
from 81 % to 66 %. erage energy efficiency, freshwater production cost with constant
Also, Fig. 9b shows that the average thermal efficiency of the SS- FWFR, wire mesh layer number, and on/off time. Fig. 10a shows that
WM perform the highest enhancement compared to SS-T at low FWFR the mesh size affects the SS-WM performance; the productivity is en-
as presented for yield in Fig. 5a. This figure shows that the thermal effi- hanced by about 102 % by using a small size of wire mesh and 30 %
ciency increases from 24 % to 33 %, with an increase of FWFR from and 41 % for medium and large sizes, respectively. This reduction is

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Fig. 11. Effect of the wire mesh layer number on SS-WM performance compared to SS-T.

due to the relation between three main parameters; the open area per- hancement is reached using only two layers. The water yield, average
centage of each size, sensible heat storage capacity of the exposed area thermal efficiency, and freshwater production cost of the SS-WM com-
to solar radiation, and surface tension force generated under the gravity pared to SS-T are improved by about 102 %, 102 %, and 44 %, respec-
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force and water specifications effects. So, the medium size introduces tively.
the lowest improvement. Due to the relative stability of the solar radia-
tion values during the test days, the thermal efficiency takes the same 4.6. Operating time effect
trend as the productivity. It has the most significant improvement by
utilizing the small size wire mesh by about 102 %, as presented in Fig. The water attached by the wire mesh needs some time to allow the
10b. This tendency is attributable to higher availability of energy re- heat to transfer to it. So, continuous operation is not considered in the
sulting from the evaporation of salt water and the high temperature of present study. As shown in Fig. 12, the system yield enhancement
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the system. As expected, the freshwater production cost depends on the decrements with the increment of “on” operating time until reaching a
system yield. The cost reached the lowest value for small wire mesh by low value at balance operation (ton = toff = 20 s), then increase to
about 0.01 USD/l with a reduction of about 44 % less than SS-T as pre- achieve a peak value, and after that decreases again. Also, the other
sented in Fig. 10c. performance parameters have the same trend. This behavior may be
due to some reasons:
4.5. Wire mesh layer number effect
1. The increase in on-time is attributable to the cooling impact of
It is noticeable from studying three sizes of wire mesh with various water in the trough during the on-time interval. This reduces the
specifications that the small size has the highest performance over the water evaporation rate from the trough, resulting in a decline in
other two sizes. This may be due to the packed absorber layer number, the distiller's overall productivity and performance.
which affects the suitable area's availability to falling water droplets 2. Initially, the decrement in production rate with increasing on-
specifications. So, to optimize the utilization of the currently proposed time can be explained as follows: increasing the on-time increases
modification, a packed absorber is tested with a different layer number the quantity of water sprayed over the packed absorber mesh,
from 1 to 4. Fig. 11a–c show results satisfy the desired improvement. increasing the boundary layer thickness, increasing the thermal
Compared to the effects of wire mesh findings, the best performance en-

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Fig. 12. Effect of the on/off operating time on SS-WM performance compared to SS-T.

Table 5 resistance and diffusion layer thickness, and decreasing heat and
Comparison with similar techniques. mass transfer, reducing the production rate.
Distillation technique Distillate System Cost Ref. 3. Increasing the on-time above this limit will significantly drop the
accumulation of water droplets tied to the packed absorber, which
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yield efficiency (USD/l)

l/m2/day % raises the amount of heat provided to the wire mesh by solar
energy gained, which raises the quantity of vapor available, and
SS-WM 3.007 45 0.008 Present
enhances the amount of water accumulated. Moreover, increasing
study
SS-HFUA 4.41 41.3 0.0120 [63] the on-time beyond a specific limit decreases the probability of
Compact SS 4.5–7.03 46–72 – [76] dryness of the packed absorber due to a decrease in the heat
SS with nano-fluid 6.52 68 0.011 [77] supplied to the wire mesh by solar energy gained.
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SS with radiative cooling system 2.805 30.7 0.042 [78] 4. In addition, at higher on-time and greater limits of water flow,
Pyramid SS with reflectors and 7 0.83 0.021 [79]
flooding is a possibility, hence limiting the unit's performance to a
cooling glass
SS with Jute wick and double 29.37 [80]
higher limit.
slope.
Wick with concave pyramid SS. 30.0 [81] The outcomes mentioned above may be explained as follows: Rais-
Double slope SS with fins, PCM 39.74 [82] ing the water flow on time would surely alter the heat provided to the
and wick.
distiller. More significant heat input to the system enhances (increases)
Wick material (black blanket) 50.25 [83]
with pyramid SS the temperature of water and vapor capacity, enhancing the unit's over-
Square pyramid SS with cover 44.0 [84] all performance and the quantity of water collected. It is vital to explain
of its shape and multiple that a short on time (10 s) is enough to enhance the unit output. The ra-
basins tio of on time to off time within the range of 10:20 s is considerably
more effective for enhancing the distiller's efficiency. In this example,
the water output, average thermal efficiency, and freshwater produc-
tion cost of SS-WM are increased by 203 %, 204 %, and 63 %, respec-

13
E.M.S. El-Said et al. Desalination xxx (xxxx) 116276

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OO
PR
D
TE
EC
RR
CO

16