Improvement in the environmental, exergy, energy, and economic performance of hemicylindrical solar still integrated with a built in active condenser: Experimental investigation

In this paper, an experimental study is performed to investigate the effect of utilizing an internal condenser (IC) on augmenting the performance of a hemicylindrical type solar still (HSS). The proposed SS body is divided by a metal basin into two chambers; the upper chamber for evaporation and the bottom for condensation and located on the under of the basin absorber. Salt water is heated by solar radiation and then evaporated. Some of the produced vapor is condensed on the surface transparent cover, while the rest is naturally circulated to the condensation chamber to be condensed there. Hence, the novelty in the current work is utilizing the IC with natural air circulation in HSS instead of forced circulation and evaluate its effects on the thermal, thermodynamic, economic, and environmental performance based on energy, exergy, exergoeconomic (EXC), enviroeconomic (ENC), exergoenvironmental (EXE), and exergoenviroeconomic (EEC) parameters. For comparison, the traditional SS without an IC (HSS-C) is also tested. Depending on energy, exergy, cost, EXC, EXE, and EEC, the modified HSS with an IC (HSS-M) demonstrated outstanding performance. Comparing HSS-M to HSS-C, the daily water yield is increased by roughly 99.9%, while costs have decreased by 46.6%. Utilizing an IC increases the energy and exergy efficiency of HSS-C by around 60.4 and 51.9%, respectively. Based on energy and exergy approaches, the CO2 net emissions reduced annually for HSS-M by approximately 104.9%. The use of ICs has been successful in improving the energy, efficiency, economic, and environmental performance of HSS.