Experimental study of a solar water treatment device with dome structure cover in winter: performance evaluation and comparative analysis

In this paper, a dome slope single basin solar still for water treatment and desalination is presented. This new solar still device is based on installing a dome slope cover on the walls of the solar still. The main objective of such a still is to concentrate more sunrays at the still's bottom basin, through the increased area of the dome glass cover. Experiments are conducted under the climate conditions in Hangzhou city, China, for testing the operational performance of the dome slope type solar still and the fourfold slope still, so as to make a comparative analysis between them. Assessment of the dome slope still's feasibility is performed based on energy, exergy, exergoeconomic, and enviroeconomic methodologies, as well as energy payback time. Results show that the productivity of the dome slope still is 36% higher than that of the fourfold slope still, and the dome slope solar still enhances the average hourly energy efficiency by 34%. Due to the higher energy and exergy outputs of the dome slope solar still throughout its lifetime, the novel solar still proposed in this study mitigates more CO2 compared with the fourfold slope still. Overall, incorporation of the dome slope cover with the still is found to be promising in terms of freshwater yield, cost, and energy payback time compared with the conventional one. The dome slope single basin solar still appears to be effective from exergoeconomic and exergoenvironmental parameter analysis.