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Design optimisation of pillar-mounted sun tracking solar-water purifiers for large households

Solar water purification by distillation has been used for decades as a method of making water safe for human consumption, but it has not been commercialised in Africa. At one university of Technology in South Africa, several designs with potential for commercialisation have recently been developed to serve small rural homesteads. Up to 5 litres pure water per day can be produced by some of the designs in summer periods. For larger homesteads, there is need to increase the productivity of the stills. There is also need to minimise the ground area taken by the larger units. This paper addresses how these objectives can be met by letting the purifiers track the sun and by mounting several units on a vertical pillar. We show how a ground area of only 5.5 m2 can be used to do a job that would otherwise require up to 39 m2, and yet produce about 31% more water in a day. This was achieved by designing and constructing a single axis pillar sun tracking system, running intermittently in the East-West direction.