Engineering Commons^™

Solar Earth‑Water Distillation For Wet Sand, Richard C. Peralta, Timothy M. Skergan, David B. Marx

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Solar earth-water distillation is a means of extracting moisture from an earth medium. Three designs of the hot-box type of solar earth-water still were tested using wet or saturated sand. The designs included: low height with reflective interior siding, tall height with reflective siding and tall height with absorptive siding. The daily volume of distillate from different designs was compared. A twenty-centimeter-tall still with reflective siding produced significantly greater yields than one twice as tall. No significant difference in the yield between tall stills with light-absorptive versus light reflective interior siding was found. A regression equation was developed to predict …