Solar water desalination for Ethiopia rural house holder

This project presents the design and testing of solar water still by utilizing solar energy for purification of brackish water which contribute the supply of pure water in Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, due to the lack of pure water about 250000 children die per year. The purpose of this research is to provide potable water by using solar water distiller which can be locally manufacture and flexible. Solar water still natural way of water desalination. The operation principle of single-basin solar distillation is similar to hydrological cycles. The incoming solar radiation from the sun is focused and concentrated onto a receiver pipe using a single basin trough, heating the incoming impure water at which point it is sprayed into our custom designed distillation device where it evaporates and re-condensed into pure potable water. The single basin solar water distiller has the capacity to purify brackish water up to 99.9% and will produce four gallons of pure water per day. Since the daily recommended consumption of pure water per person per day is about two liters, it is sufficient to satisfy the need of pure water for one family. Solar desalinate water have a lot of health advantage such as removing contaminants, elimination of chemicals and no additives. However the result obtained at the end of this paper were not as similar as theoretical figure, from first day experiment the amount of distilled water collect was 750cm3 and second day 1700cm3 which is less than theoretical number. While conducting the experiment different factor are identified the major are types of materials (glazing, insulator) and design parameter (tilt angle, tracking and mechanism) and site (solar radiation and shadow). Generally the efficiency of solar water still can be optimized as much as possible by design modification, material selection and site selection