Techno-economic analysis of solar stills using integrated fuzzy analytical hierarchy process and data envelopment analysis

Abstract

Desalination using solar stills is an ancient economic method for water desalination. Over the years, research and development in the area of solar still has resulted in increased distillate yield by means of integration of PCM (phase change material), photo-voltaic thermal (PVT), etc with the still. Nano-PCM is an upcoming technology which modifies the thermal performance of PCM. The aim of this research is to analyze the efficiency of 20 solar stills including nano-PCM based solar stills considering various input and output criteria using integrated fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and data envelopment analysis (DEA). The efficiency derived here is relative with regard to the parameters and stills considered in this study. The result infers that, even though the productivity of stepped solar still with sun tracking system was high, but when techno-economic aspects were considered it is not among the top solar stills. The analysis indicated pyramid type solar still, single slope solar still with PVT, solar still with NPCM (paraffin + copper oxide), solar still with NPCM (paraffin + titanium dioxide) and solar still with PCM (paraffin) occupies the top five positions with relative efficiency of 100, 100, 88.47, 88.46 and 76.93% respectively.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2017.11.050
Divisions: College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > School of Engineering and Technology > Mechanical, Biomedical & Design
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > Sustainable environment research group
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > Aston Institute of Materials Research (AIMR)
Additional Information: © 2017, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Funding: DST & British Council - UKIERI project funding scheme (DST/INT/UK/P-86/2014, UKIERI-DST-2014-15-03), Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF), NET-JRF program respectively by the University Grants Commission (UGC), New Delhi.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Solar stills; Fuzzy AHP DEA; Relative efficiency; MCDM
Publication ISSN: 0038-092X
Last Modified: 03 Oct 2024 07:16
Date Deposited: 29 Nov 2017 10:05
Full Text Link: http://linkingh ... 038092X1731037X
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PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2018-01-01
Published Online Date: 2017-11-26
Accepted Date: 2017-11-18
Authors: Dsilva Winfred Rufuss, D.
Raj Kumar, V.
Suganthi, L.
Iniyan, S.
Davies, P.A. (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-4783-1234)

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