Effect of absorber rock on the performance of solar still

Abstract

Pure and fresh water is being scarce day by day. In spite of being a riverine country the people of Bangladesh are not provided with sufficient amount of pure drinking water. A large number of people including children and infants face severe water borne diseases and many of them die. Solar still is a cheap, useful, non-toxic, clean and easy to made renewable technology which can be used to provide pure water. The potential of solar still is high in Bangladesh due to the climate conditions. Effectiveness of a solar still can be analyzed from different point of views considering different parameters. Over the time various modifications have been made and investigations have been done to find the factors that enhance the performance of solar still. However, in our experiments initiatives were taken to study the performance of a simple passive solar still having black colored rocks as absorber medium. The objective of this paper was to find the effect of black colored rock absorber medium on the performance of solar still during the presence of day light and also during the period when the sun light disappeared. It has been observed that using such absorber medium results in yield of pure water even after sun-set.