Traditional solar distiller improvement by a single external refractor under the climatic conditions of the El-Oued region, Algeria

Abstract

Desalination is now successfully practiced in many countries as drinking water supply has become a growing problem in most parts of the world. Algeria, like the Maghreb countries, has generally adopted two desalination processes (membrane processes and distillation processes which require a phase change, evaporation/condensation), the latter method is subject of our study. An experimental study was made on two similar stills with a single slope, size 1 m × 1 m, the first distiller D1 is used as a control and the second distiller D2 has a simple external mirror glued to its backlog. The same experience has been done in different climates with improvement results ranging from 9% to 21%. In our case, a complete study was concerning the improvement, the efficiency, the investment and finally the error analysis of the instrumentations that have not been done before. We obtained a very interesting improvement which varied between 42% and 45%, the efficiency is 35% and the recovery period of the sum invested is recovered in 23 d, which shows that this technique is more favorable under the climatic conditions of the West Southeast region of Algeria than elsewhere.