Hemispherical Solar Distiller with Truncated Circular Cone-Shaped Reflector Mirrors ( TCC-RM) : Optimum inclination of Reflector Mirrors

Abstract The present study aims to achieve the highest cumulative yield of the hemispherical distillers, by designing and constructing new reflector mirrors, which are truncated circular cone-shaped reflector mirrors (TCC-RM). To obtain the optimum inclination of TCC-RM that achieves a highest hemispherical distiller’s performance, eight inclination angles (10o, 15o, 20o, 25o, 30o, 35o, 40o and 45o with vertical) was experimentally studied. To achieve this, a series of experimental tests were carried out on the three hemispherical solar distillers, the first represents the reference distiller (traditional hemispherical solar distiller- THSD) and the other two devices are the hemispherical solar distiller with truncated circular cone-shaped reflector mirrors (HSD-TCCRM) with different inclination angles. The experimental results indicate that utilizing TCC-RM with a 25o inclination angle achieves the maximum cumulative yield of 8.35 L/m2 with an improvement of 42.74% compared to THSD. While the utilization of TCC-RM with the inclination angles by 30o, 35o, 20o, 40o, and 15o achieves the cumulative yield of 7.9, 7.3, 7.05, 6.67, 6.6 L/m2 compared with 5.85 L/m2 for THSD. On the contrary, adjusting the inclination angle of TCC-RM at 10o, and 45o affects negatively the cumulative yield of the HSD with TCC-RM in comparison with THSD. Based on the data of cumulative yield, daily efficiency, and the economic analysis it’s recommended to utilize TCC-RM with a 25o inclination angle to achieve the highest performance and minimum distillate cost of hemispherical solar distillers.