Multistage interfacial thermal desalination system with metallic evaporators

Deka, N and Dash, S (2023) Multistage interfacial thermal desalination system with metallic evaporators. In: Desalination, 556 .

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Abstract

Small scale and passive solar-thermal desalination system hold promise to be employed in decentralized and off-grid areas to address scarcity of potable water. Here, we present a compact multistage thermal desalination system based on interfacial evaporation and latent heat recovery. We develop a textured metallic evaporator substrate that serves as a wick and reduces the thermal resistance for interfacial evaporation. We demonstrate that the rate of evaporation can be increased by tuning the wettability of the condenser surface. Patterned wettability-contrast surfaces are shown to enhance the rate of condensation compared to an unpatterned substrate with spatially uniform wettability. In a single stage desalination system, with patterned condenser surfaces, the evaporation rate increases by ~11 % and the water collection increases by ~21 % compared to that using an unpatterned condenser substrate. The thermal to vapor efficiency of ~56 % in a single stage increases to ~185 % with the use of multistage system. We achieve a water collection of ~2.17 Lm−2 h−1 using a 5-stage system. A theoretical model based on heat and mass transport analysis is used to determine the influence of the system geometry and ambient conditions on the overall efficiency of the desalination system.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Desalination
Publisher:	Elsevier B.V.
Additional Information:	The copyright for this article belongs to Elsevier B.V.
Keywords:	Condensation; Evaporation; Evaporators; Potable water; Textures; Waste heat; Wetting, Decentralised; Desalination systems; Metallics; Multi-stages; Passive solar; Small scale; Solar thermal; Textured surface; Thermal desalination; Water collection, Desalination
Department/Centre:	Division of Mechanical Sciences > Mechanical Engineering
Date Deposited:	21 Apr 2023 09:58
Last Modified:	21 Apr 2023 09:58
URI:	https://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/81355

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