Design and Development of Solar Crop Dryer Integrated with Oil Bath

Solar distiller was constructed and tested in this study. The purpose is to get a portable water from nearly any source available in a relatively cheaper means using a renewable solar energy. The result obtained clearly confirmed the reliability of this method to provide portable water especially in a rural area of developing country like Nigeria where the supply of fresh water is inadequate.A local dirty stream that is constantly flowing through the year served as the source of the brackish water was used for this work. Sample taken from this stream was distilled using the constructed double slope solar distiller. The incoming solar radiation from the sun is focused and concentrated on to solar water distillation unit. Analyzing the sample of the distillate, the PH value of the brackish feed water was 9.20 ±1.10 while that of the distillate was 8.10 ±1.06, which falls within the WHO limits of 6.5-8.5 for drinkable water.