Solar Distillation Using Nano-Material

Fresh water is the basic necessity for sustenance of life and most valuable renewable resource on earth. Due to water pollution the surface and underground water reservoirs are being highly contaminated. The demand of fresh water is increasing along with growth of human population. To meet this demand of fresh water potable water researchers and scientists developed various technologies. These water purification methods require high energy and high cost.
For water purification one of the most opted methods is distillation, which has its own drawbacks regarding economic and environmental concerns due to its dependence on conventional sources of energy. Therefore a desalination method is required to use renewable energy at low input cost and lesser efforts for the production of potable water. To overcome the scarcity of fresh water the availability of abundant solar energy is the boon for the application of solar distillation technology.
A distillation method using solar energy can be economical and environment friendly. Solar still is widely used in solar desalination. It has relatively low productivity but competitive to the other desalination methods for production of water due to its relatively low cost, simplicity in design and operation.
By making necessary modifications to improve rate of heat transfer we can fetch maximum output from solar desalination. Many attempts have been made using variety of materials such as usage of Lauric acid, Potassium dichromate, NaNO₃ etc and also energy absorbing materials such as charcoal, gravels, sponges to serve as heat absorption mediums.
Various materials are being used to improve the productivity and still research is going on for using better materials. After considering various materials we came up with a novice idea of using Titanium oxide (nano-material) as the heat absorbing material to enhance the rate of heat transfer. Because of extensive thermal properties nano-materials possess, they are worthy enough to be tested for increased desalination productivity and output despite their cost.
Nano-materials have proved their success in various fields such as mathematics, engineering and technology and they also played a crucial role in enhancement of various physical, chemical properties of materials in these fields.
This work is mainly focused on use of Titanium oxide is a nano-material in solar distillation for improving the productivity and efficiency of solar still.