Experimental investigation of natural flow collectors in solar desalination with glass cover

The need for clean water has recently become a major topic of discussion in many parts of the world due to the increasing world population and the destruction of natural conditions that have reduced freshwater sources. Solar desalination technology is a solution to the problems that can produce fresh water from an environmentally friendly process. The purpose of this research is to increase the production of fresh water from the desalination process by utilizing sunlight as the main energy. The tests is carried out by examining desalination models that are suitable for geographical conditions, especially Indonesia, which is a country on the equator. For this reason, the solar collector model without tilt angle will be tested directly here, because geographically it gets full sun. The working process of this solar collector is to take advantage of the natural movement of water flow in the pipe, and the natural heat transfer process without coercion. The test results obtained that the intensity of sunlight still dominates the amount of freshwater production. The average solar intensity of 457.26 W/m2 is capable of producing 2.56 kg/day of fresh water, and the total energy absorbed by the water of 1.69 kW.h. With the average maximum solar intensity of 616.81 W/m2, it is able to produce clean water for seven days of testing as much as 10.87 kg/day with total energy absorbed of 7.18 kW.h. Freshwater production will increase if a large amount of heat energy is obtained.