Designing and Developing Climate-Resilient Solar Desalination Systems for Off-Grid Communities: A CFD-Backed Multi-Objective Optimization Approach

Abubakar Sadiq Isah, Abdulazeez Juwon Rotimi

Abstract


Access to clean water is a significant problem in low resource and off grid areas. Solar distillation is a sustainable option but suffers from low productivity and there is no reliable tool to predict performance. The aim of this study was to design, simulate, manufacture and validate a double slope basin type solar still suitable for tropical climates. This design was modelled using CFD software ANSYS Fluent. The fluid flow equations, continuity equation, Navier-Stokes, energy and species transport were solved along with the DO radiation model. A prototype was manufactured using mild steel and glass with a basin area of 0.5m2. The prototype was tested outside under natural solar irradiation. Temperature, solar irradiation and distillate were all recorded at hourly intervals. The validation showed that the CFD model matched well with the experimental data. The temperature and daily yield of the basin had less than 8% deviation. The double slope basin types solar still reached high temperatures of 55-67°C within the basin, it produced freshwater at a rate of 2.63-2.90 L per day and had a thermal efficiency of 60.9%. This shows that affordable solar stills can be used for decentralised desalination. The validated CFD model can be used for further improvements to the design and to analyse scaling.


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