Solar Water Distillation (Reproduction Fresh Water From Dirty Water)

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a solar distillation still for the reproduction of fresh water, safe to drink without any stuck impurities, from different samples of dirty water drawn from 5 sources (river, well, bilge water, pool & lake), in addition, two water samples prepared by adding NaCl and sugar to tap water, in order to show the effect of them on the distillation process. Also, the designed solar still is used as a collector to rain water, when it is used in rainy days. The experiments were carried out within 10 hours for each mentioned sample. The amount of each drawn water was 20 litters as a standard for comparison between samples and their results, after distillation. The distilled samples were adopted after two hours for each one. The results were varied from one sample to another, but the successed samples are graduated as sweet water, river, well, pool, and lake, respectively. While the failure samples are salted water and bilge water, not proper for drinking. This procedure was adopted to reproducing drinkable water in the semiarid areas or deserts, where there is no source of drinking water just one of the above mentioned sources. The results were analyzed and showed that 98.4% pure water is resulted from sweet water, 86% for river, 84.5% for well, 78% for pool, 76.7% for lake, 57.6% for salted water and 53.8% for bilge water. The remained percentages, as obtained in analysis, were the stuck impurities, slush, salinity, and toxicity. Finally; besides sweet water, river and well; pool and lake could be used as a proper source of drinking water.