Design and Development of a Dual Solar Water Purifier

In this work, dual solar water purifier was designed and developed using locally available engineering materials. Using the sun as the principal source of energy, a cheap low technological method was used to produce small quantities of safe
drinking water. The sun provides heat and ultraviolet (UV) light as the two key elements that destroy pathogen in water. They aided the formulation of the water purifying models. Two popular methods of purifying water were combined to
create new purifiers’ design models. This design comprises of two already existing methods of purifying water, the Solar Still and the SODIS (Solar water Disinfection). The addition of the two methods creates the intended dual water
purifier. They both aided each other in that Solar Still produced much more purified water but at a lower volume while the other, higher volume at a shorter period when exposed to the same solar intensity. The materials used for this
design played an important part in the performance evaluations of the purifier. The percentage of the mount of purified water was evaluated after various days of testing whereby efficient results were achieved and discussed. The amount of
purified water and efficiencies from a total volume of 8litres and 500ml for each bottle for both Solar Still and SODIS bottles after various days of testing were 5.5litres, 4.8litrres, 5.0litres and 68.75%, 60%, 62.5% respectively. The efficiency
of the dual purifier is dependent on some variables such as the amount of water to be purified, the solar intensity and other thermal quantities. An affordable total costs of production of fifty four thousand and four hundred naira (₦54,400=00) was spent, an equivalent of $346.50 or ₤209.00) at conversion rate of ₦157 = $1 and ₦260 = ₤1. This paper presents an efficient and effective dual purifier, which is affordable for household use and requires little or no training for operation and maintenance.