Use of solar energy for drinking water production in southern Algeria

Water, a vital resource essential to all forms of life, plays a central role in critical sectors such as the pharmaceutical industry, chemical applications and biology laboratories. Faced with the increasing scarcity of this resource and the global energy transition, solar distillation is emerging as a sustainable solution that combines economic and social challenges. This work explores, through an experimental and numerical approach, the performance of a double-sloped solar distiller designed for arid regions. A calculation code developed in FORTRAN was used to model the key parameters: operating temperatures, overall and internal efficiency, performance factor, and condensate flow rate. The numerical simulations were rigorously compared with experimental data collected under the climatic conditions of the Ouargla region (Algeria), thus providing robust validation of the proposed model.

Autorentext

Mekki Zerouali é doutor em Física Energética pela Universidade de Batna 1 (El-Hadj Lakhdar Batna, Argélia). Atualmente, ocupa o cargo de professor assistente na Escola Nacional Superior de Energias Renováveis, Ambiente e Desenvolvimento Sustentável. A sua investigação centra-se principalmente na integração da energia solar.