Page - 79 - in Clean Water Using Solar and Wind - Outside the Power Grid

© 2019 The Author. This is an Open Access book chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits copying and redistribution for non-commercial purposes with no derivatives, provided the original work is properly cited (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). This does not affect the rights licensed or assigned from any third party in this book. The chapter is from the book Clean Water Using Solar and Wind: Outside the Power Grid, Gustaf Olsson (Author). doi: 10.2166/9781780409443_0079 Chapter 6 Solar thermal desalination and solar water heating “Solar power is the last energy resource that isn’t owned yet – nobody taxes the sun yet.” Bonnie Raitt, American blues singer and songwriter. “It’s time for the human race to enter the solar system.” Dan Quayle, Vice President of the United States 1989–1993. It is not necessary always to use electric power to produce clean water. Solar distillation is described in 6.1 as a complement to other water supply methods. Heating water has been done with solar thermal collectors for a long time. In 6.2 it is shown to be a complement to using electric power for heating and cooking. 6.1 SOLAR STILL DISTILLATION FOR CLEANING WATER Solar still distillation (SSD) is simply a natural evaporation- condensation process. This is a practical and simple technique to clean water in remote arid areas and does not require any electric power, only the heat from the sun. The advantages of an SSD system include low investment costs, low maintenance and low energy requirements. Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book-pdf/520710/wio9781780409443.pdf by IWA Publishing user