Mindaugas ​Beliauskas
SOLAR STILL PANEL PROJECT
Group Project Requirements:
To design and build a solar still panel that has a minimum efficiency of 25% and 100ml of water can be collected over an hour during sunny day. Write a lab manual for future heat transfer labs explaining how to experimentally find the efficiency of the solar still.
Design Procedure:
In this project, I was responsible for making the intial sketch, CAD model and building the actual solar still.
First, an affordable single slope solar still design was selected. The basic dimentions were determined in order to satisfy the 100ml water collection per hour requirement . The solar still had to be easily movable from room to room, therefore the width was set to be 28". The lenght was set to be 40".
The glass in design is positioned at 30.5° from the ground. This angle was determined first by finding the average angle the sun hits the Earth at in Melbourne, Florida. Using the Solar Energy Center website it was found that the average angle for the sun in December at noon was 36° and the average angle for the sun in June at noon was 83°. This gave an average angle of 59.5°. Taking the perpendicual of that angle to maximize the amount of solar radiation through the glass gave a glass angle of 30.5°.
Initial solar still panel sketch:
Once the sketch of the design was completed, I made a CAD model for the solar still:
Later, I was involved in building the actual solar still panel and refurbishing an old cart to use for our project. Other team members installed thermo-couples on the glass, solar still bottom to determine experimental efficiency of the solart still. Finished solar still panel:
