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Abstract
Renewable energy resources like tidal, geothermal, solar, wind, etc., play a vital role in our energy needs with the decline of fossil fuels. The efficient use of solar energy will be of primary importance to replace the conventional energy source in future. The present study details the utilization of solar energy for desalination of water for domestic purpose. It involves the designing of ground water desalination plant for small scale domestic purpose. Ground water is heated by solar radiation directly into the receiver and the generated steam is collected & condensed. Overall cost of this plant is kept low &also it is not harmful for the environment. This Solar based distillation system is optimum to remove minerals & hardness found in ground water and make it suitable for drinking. For a normal Indian family of 5 persons requiring 25 Liters of pure water per day under normal conditions the design conditions was calculated. With heat load of 3584 W, Area of Apreture was found to be 8.54m2 and the area of one module was calculated as 1.31m2. Total number of modules calculated was 8. The diameter of absorber was calculated as 0.0264Meters while the focal length of dish was calculated as 0.36 Meters. Economically it was found that with per day distilled water production of 5000 litres, the total savings are of Rs 12500 and a payback period of 6 Years was also calculated.