Experimental study on the performance of floating solar desalination system with porous absorbent plate

Desalination of water has been a subject that humans have been doing in different ways since the distant past and have provided their fresh water. In this study, the rate of fresh water production in the floating solar water desalination device equipped with porous absorbent plate is investigated experimentally. The hourly temperature, productivity, and efficiency of this desalination system without porous absorbent plate and improved with porous absorbent plate are obtained and compared. Eventually, a cost analysis is accomplished to evaluate the solar water desalination device from the economic point of view. As one of the results of this study, it can be concluded that the productivity increases with the use of porous absorbent plate. This is due to providing more surfaces for absorption of solar energy and evaporation of the water by using the porous absorbent plate. This improvement is about 70.12% in the case of absorbent sponge plate with the thickness of 2 cm as compared to the case without absorbent plate. The costs per liter of fresh water produced for the floating solar water desalination device with porous absorbent plate (sponge) and without absorbent plate are 0.0539 $/l/m2 and 0.0757 $/l/m2, respectively.