DESIGN,FABRICATION AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A SINGLE- SLOPED BASIN TYPE SOLAR WATER DISTILLER

A single-sloped, single-basin solar water distiller was designed, fabricated, and evaluated for its performance. The saltwater samples taken from Dolores Tropicana Beach Resort, Bawing, General Santos City has undergone solar distillation in the month of April 2018 at the Agricultural Engineering Complex, Mindanao State University, General Santos City for the performance evaluation. The output water was also assessed for water quality. In addition, the design undertook economic analysis to determine the payback period of the total cost. In this article, a review of factors affecting solar distillation production and enhancement techniques has been tackled. There were two procedural conditions with 10-hr operation (8 AM- 5 PM)were used in this study; the one with a sponge in the basin and the other without. Each of the conditions was given three trials with a 5 L saltwater input. Data for ambient temperature, distiller temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, & weather were recorded every hour. The last trial of the second treatment of the study, conducted 6th of April 2018, marked the highest efficiency among all trials. The highest efficiency recorded was 53.23 %.On the same day, the highest temperature 72.5 °C was recorded at 2:00 PM. Thus, the last trial also obtained the highest distillation rate of 295 mL/hr. The lowest output among all trials was 1875 mL. The machine yielded an average efficiency of 46.3 % and 53.2% and an average distillation rate of 231.7 mL/hr and 266.2 mL/hr for treatments 1 and 2 respectively. Furthermore, the output water was safe and acceptable. Laboratory water analyses showed positive results; the distillate passed most of the water quality parameters except pH and DO with small deviations. A few observations and recommendations were elaborated to improve performance.