Performance Improvement of Roof Transparent Solar Still Coupled With Agriculture Greenhouse

Alaa H. Salah, Gasser E Hassan, Mohamed Elhelw, Hassan Fath, Samy E. Elsherbiny

Abstract


In Egyptian desert, growing plants is difficult due to harsh climate (hot at the daytime and cold at the night), infertile  soil,  low  average  rainfall  and  lack  of  fresh  water  for  irrigation  purposes. A set of simple transparent solar stills are integrated with a new solar driven agriculture greenhouse (GH). The stills are placed at the GH roof to use the extra solar radiation (above that required for plant photosynthesis process) for water desalination. In addition to water desalination concept the solar still units even reduce the cooling load during the daytime. A net of aluminum metal coated with black colour is placed on the base of the solar still units to raise the water temperature (enhance desalination process) and provide partially shading for the GH. Using aluminum net decreases also the number of solar still units required to produce the required amount of GH  fresh water leading to a significant cost reduction.

The main objectives of this work are sizing of the aluminum net, spacing between solar still units to obtain the threshold of plant requirements. Also fresh water production and greenhouse climatic conditions that plant needs (temperature, relative humidity, air velocity and amount of oxygen) are simulated.

Numerical simulation was carried out for the hottest day of Borg Elarab, Alexandria (Egypt). 

Keywords


renewable energy; solar energy; water desalination; agriculture greenhouse; solar stills

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21622/resd.2017.03.1.074

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Copyright (c) 2017 Alaa H. Salah, Gasser E Hassan, Mohamed Elhelw, Hassan Fath, Samy E. Elsherbiny

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development

E-ISSN: 2356-8569

P-ISSN: 2356-8518

 

Published by:

Academy Publishing Center (APC)

Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT)

Alexandria, Egypt

resd@aast.edu