Solar distillation is a process in which water is evaporated and thus separated from salts and impurities and collected back as a pure water. The course contents covers basics of distillation process, types of distillation, heat transfer in solar still and other alternatives of solar still for desalination of water. The course discusses about future sweet water scarcity going to occur in developed and developing countries and methods to obtain fresh water from salty water. It compares distillation cost and pumping water cost. How ancestors used distillation process and what development took place in last few decades is mentioned here. Followed by working principle, different designs of solar basins are described in the course. How to estimate the water flow rate and parameters affecting the water flow rate are also explained in the course. Other conventional methods of solar distillation like humidification-dehumidification of air, multi effect distillation and member distillation are also described.

Learning Objectives

• Be able to understand fundamentals of water distillation process
• Be able to know different basin designs of solar distillation
• Be able to understand heat transfer and mass flow rate of water for solar distillation
• Be able to know the parameters affecting working of solar distillation process.
• Be able to understand applications of solar distillation.