Author : Piyush Gupta and Nikhil Singh

The present work focuses on the application of Taguchi technique to investigate the effect of water temperature, inclination angle, salt concentration and water depth on the performance of the single slope solar stills inclined at 25O, 30O and 35O. An indoor simulation model was developed using constant temperature water bath to maintain water temperatures at steady state for the purpose of experiment. The condensing covers inclined at 25O, 30O and 35O were fabricated of commonly used glass sheet to form top inclined cover and GRP sheets to make the side walls of the cover. This research outlines the Taguchi’s Parameter Design Approach, which has been applied to optimize the process parameters which affect the productivity of single slope solar still. The factors evaluated are salt concentration, water depth, and inclination angle and water temperature. An orthogonal array, signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio and analysis of variance (ANOVA) are employed to analyse the effect of these factors. An orthogonal array has been used to plan the experiments. The raw data analysis and signal-to-noise ratio analysis have been employed to analyse the influence of the process parameters on the distillate output of single slope solar still. The purpose of the analysis of variance (ANOVA) is to investigate which design parameters significantly affect the quality characteristic. This procedure eliminates the need for repeated experiments, saves time and conserves the material as opposed by the conventional procedure.

Keywords: Distillate output, Solar Desalination, Taguchi method, single slope solar still.

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.5, No.4 (Aug-2015)