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Solar energy is being used for the purpose of water distillation since long. The present work demonstrates the comprehensive experimental investigation of various heat transfer enhancement arrangements on tubular solar still for its performance improvement. These arrangements include; case-1: Tubular solar still (TSS) with flat plate basin (TSS-FP), case-2: TSS with U-corrugated basin (TSS-UA), case-3: TSS with the coupled cylindrical parabolic collector (TSS-CPC). According to the available literature, the exergy and economical analysis of tubular solar stills are not explored much in the previous studies. Thus, a comparative thermo-economic analysis, exergy analysis and system productivity analysis have been carried out. In addition to this, the study investigates the effects of different basin water depths on system productivity. It has been found that the case-3: TSS-CPC gives the highest productivity; it was 37.75% and 80.63% higher as compared to the case-2 and case-1 respectively. Also, in the same arrangement, the enhancement in the exergy efficiency was around 48.6% and 85.2% as compared to case-2 and case-1 respectively. The per liter cost of water obtained by TSS-FP, TSS-UA, and TSS-CPC were about 0.00592, 0.00511, and 0.00567 US $/m2 respectively. The study concludes that the U-Corrugated basin surface, less basin water depth, and the secondary heating arrangement improve the productivity of the tubular still significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to use solar energy to convert raw ground and surface water into clean potable water, several distillation systems have been investigated so far. However, to be sustainable, the productivity of these systems must be as high as possible. Tubular solar stills (TSS) were investigated as one of the more productive solar distillation systems. The current study aims to improve the productivity of tubular solar stills by exploring different cover materials. The experimental study was carried out on four different TSS setups with cover materials made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polycarbonate, acrylic, and glass. In comparison to other materials, it has been observed that the TSS with glass cover gives the maximum productivity (6.23 L/m2) and daily exergy and energy efficiency (7.67%, 71.56%, respectively) for the same water depth of 0.5 cm in each basin. According to the economic analysis of all the arrangements carried out, the TSS with Acrylic cover provides the lowest cost of producing freshwater among all of the investigated combinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]