Dr. Nguyen The Bao

Hochiminh University of Technology, Vietnam.

1. INTRODUCTION

The development of SOLSTILL, a simulation program for estimating the performance of basin type solar stills is described. Models for both the standard free convection solar still and a forced convection solar still with enhanced heat recovery are included in the program. For the conventional free convection systems, the SOLSTILL program also enables simulation of more complex systems with many more parameters compared to the existing models found in the literature. A new model incorporating heat and mass transfer in forced convection solar stills with enhanced heat recovery is described in this paper. The design, fabrication and testing of an experimental system set up to validate SOLSTILL is detailed. The comparison of experimental and simulation results indicates that the program can predict distillate production at an acceptable level of accuracy.