Abstract

The purpose of this work is to design, model and imulate a solar multiple effect distiller working at high temperature. The design of the equipment must satisfy the needs of water of isolated fishermen communities in the north of Chile. The basic characteristics of the system should be: low cost, simple maintenance, compact, modular, with a long useful life and high efficiency. The model of the proposed distiller is a relatively new development in the area of the solar distillation with heat recovery. The distiller has double bottom and five main trays (five effects) that work like evaporator and condenser at the same time. The condensation heat of each stage is used in the following step. The amount of used energy can be through a solar collector connected to a heat exchanger in the tray of double bottom or using another energy source that may be adapted to the system. A computer program has been developed, showing the behavior of operation of the equipment. This program has been realised using Matlab-SimulinkÒ with the support of the software library CarnotÒ that was developed by the Solar-Institut Jülich of the Fachhochschule of Aachen in Germany. The simulation program is quite flexible, allowing modifications of the different parameters of the thermal analysis and the different equations of the model. The results of the simulation, the behavior at different temperatures, water production and involved energy are presented in graphic and database forms.