Experimental research on night heat loss and dust effect of distillation-solar chimney power plant

•The impact of the insulation layer and dust on the integrated system were explored.•The insulation can improve nighttime power generation and smooth system output.•The insulation will reduce the water yield of the integrated system.•Dust accumulation will reduce power generation and shorten the generation duration.•Dust accumulation will lower the seawater temperature and thus reduce water yield. To more comprehensively grasp the operating characteristics of the solar chimney power plants combined with distillation and provide a valuable reference for the design and operation of the power plants, a comparative test platform was built in this paper, which adopted manual covering of insulation layer and dust, and explored for the first time the impact of the insulation layer and dust accumulation on the operational characteristics of power plants. The results show that the insulation layer can increase the temperature rise of the airflow at night by a maximum of 2.1 °C, which is 25.9 %; but at the same time, it will reduce the temperature difference between the seawater and the solar still cover, resulting in a decrease of more than 7 % in daily water yield. Therefore, if the power plant pursues water production, it is not necessary to install insulation layers. Dust accumulation will affect the heat collection and storage performance of the system, reduce the power output, and shorten the effective power generation time; at the same time, lowering the seawater temperature will also reduce the water yield of the system by more than 10 %, so the power plant must regularly clean the collector roof.