Effect of step size and nanofluid on the performance of stepped solar still

This research work is about numerical investigation of nanofluid based stepped solar still. Volume of fluid model and Lee evaporation condensation model are used to investigate the effect of number of steps and two types of nanofluid. Two dimensional solar still is simulated considering laminar flow situation. The obtained result is compared with experimental and numerical result from the literature to verify the accuracy of the obtained result. At first, number of steps are optimized to ensure that step can increase the performance of conventional single slope solar still. Two types of nanofluid are used inside the stepped solar still Al2O3-water nanofluid and Cu-water nanofluid. Both increased the hourly productivity. Cu-water is good among them because the productivity is increased about 30% as compared to the solar still without nanofluid.