Experimental Study to Improve the Solar Desalination Performance Using Local Heat Storage Material

Abstract Brackish water is usually consumed by almost all population in southern Algeria as fresh water despite its high salinity. This region has a significant potential of solar energy and enormous reserves of brackish groundwater which can be exploited by solar desalination systems to supply small communities by potable water. In the current paper, we propose a new contribution to improve the performance of the conventional solar distiller using abundant local dune sand as heat storage medium and photo-catalytic additive within the absorber plate. Experimental results carried out at Ouargla’s University show that — The yield is proportional to some extent certain value with the sand surface density. — For a particle’s diameter ≤0.08 mm, the optimal value of the sand surface density is (sand 2.815 kg/m2 of absorber area); this leads to a daytime improvement of 61.46% on the yield compared to the baseline case. — Moreover, adding (charcoal 0.563 kg/m2 of absorber area) to the brackish water within each unit increases the output by a mean of 13.82%. After sunset, the distillation process continues for significant time. — Finally, after an economical and physical analysis, the distillate is produced with low cost and high quality.