Performance assessment of hemispherical solar distillers integrated with the red bricks filled with cement as natural thermal storage materials

Abstract

AbstractThis manuscript aims to augment the production rate of drink water from the hemispherical solar distillers using red bricks filled with cement as natural low‐cost reasonable storage materials. To obtain the optimal height and optimal gap distance of the red brick tiles filled with cement that achieves the highest productivity of hemispherical distillers. Three different heights of the red brick (1, 2, and 3 cm) with two different gap distances of (4 and 6 cm) were experimentally studied. Therefore, three hemispherical distillers were constructed and operated under the same climate conditions. The first is the traditional hemispherical solar distiller (THSD) which represents the reference distiller. The second is a hemispherical distiller with red brick tiles filled with cement set at a gap distance of 6 cm. The third is a hemispherical distiller with red brick tiles filled with cement set at a gap distance of 4 cm. The results presented that, the utilization of red brick tiles filled with cement with a height of 2 cm and a gap distance of 4 cm represents a good choice that achieves the highest performance of hemispherical distillers. The results showed that the utilization of red bricks filled with cement will be improved the accumulative yield from 4.3 L/m2/day (THSD) to 6.55 L/m2/day with an improvement of 52.3%. Also, using the red bricks filled with cement improved the thermal and exergy efficiencies by 51.24% and 435.5%, respectively compared to THSD.