Waste tyre pieces as photothermal absorbers for efficient evaporation in solar desalination systems

Abstract

Valarozition and reusing of waste materials before recycling would give sustainable outcomes and reduce the environmental effects. Among various waste materials, automobile tyres are one of the major contributors to environmental pollution while burning as they contain rubber. Hence, worn automobile tyres are procured and made into small pieces before burning to investigate the photothermal absorption in solar thermal applications. In the available solar thermal applications, solar still is the cheap and uncomplicated desalination approach that can be accessible by everyone. However, clean water production is very low in conventional solar still. Therefore, the key intention of this investigation is to improve pure drinking water generation by oating black tyre pieces in the absorber basin of solar still, which has better heat absorption characteristics. The outcomes reported that the clean water production in solar still with tyre pieces (SS-Tyre) is enhanced by 18% more than that of conventional solar still (CSS). The clean water production from SS-Tyre is about 2.7 l/sq.mt, Whereas the distillate output of CSS, is about 2.3 l/sq.mt on two consecutive testing days. In addition to productivity, the cost assessment reported that the cost per litre (CPL) and Payback Time (PT) of SS-Tyre are 19.2% and 20.1% lesser than CSS. Also, the environmental impact assessment of CSS and SS-Tyre reported that the SS-Tyre has 19% more net carbon credit than CSS.