A novel cogeneration system for sustainable water and power production by integration of a solar still and PV module

Present work is an attempt to propose and analyze a new solar still equipped to semitransparent photovoltaic and evacuated tube collector in natural mode. The system performance is investigated from various aspects such as distilled water yield, instantaneous and daily electrical power production, instantaneous and daily energy and exergy efficiencies considering six types of photovoltaic module as well as various basin water depths and number of tubes. Results show that type of photovoltaic module does not have a significant effect on distilled water yield. However, it is revealed that increasing the number of tubes could increase the water yield. It is found that for a specific number of tubes, maximum water yield in a day occurs for basin depth of 0.07m. Also, the higher number of tubes increases the distillate yield. The maximum water production (4.77kg/m2·day) is achieved for the basin depth of 0.07m and 30 numbers of tube. It is revealed that for the HIT photovoltaic module type the maximum instantaneous and daily electrical power are 70.48W/m2 and 483.2Wh/m2, respectively. Also, maximum daily energy and exergy efficiencies are calculated 6.86% and 16.65%, respectively, for basin depth of 0.07m and tubes number of 10. •A solar still integrated with evacuated tubes and semitransparent photovoltaic are proposed.•Effect of basin water depth, number of ETC and types of PV modules are investigated.•Performance of proposed systems is compared with similar systems.•Using 30 tubes, the maximum distillated yield is obtained 2.76 kg for the depth of 0.07 m.•The maximum electrical energy is achieved for the HIT with value of 70.47 W/m2.