Investigation of fluid capillary rise using 3D printed microstructure for solar desalination

Current desalination technologies such as thermal desalination and reverse osmosis are a process of converting seawater to freshwater. This method brings a negative impact on the environment such as CO2 emission. Solar desalination is one of the ways to resolve the current desalination challenges and more sustainable in terms of economic and environmental. Solar desalination uses solar energy as its energy consumption for evaporation. Solar desalination depends on the rate of evaporation specifically on the surface area. Hence, this study adopts the concept of cellular fluidics and 3D printing to perform capillaries rise and improve the liquid to the gas-surface area. The increase in strut diameter of the cell from 0.2 mm to 0.4 mm results in an increase of capillaries rise from 3.01 to 7.67 for Body Centered Cubic (BCC) cell geometrical shape. Different cell geometrical shape is also investigated with the strut diameter remaining constant. The Isotruss cell geometrical shape recorded a value of capillaries rise of 11.76 among the other geometrical shape due to Isotruss having more complexity in design and having internal structure.