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This work presents a sensitivity analysis of double slope solar still having N similar compound parabolic concentrator integrated evacuated tubular collectors in series connection (NCPCETC-DS) by incorporating heat transfer coefficient, exergy gain and exergy efficiency using one-at-a-time method. The sensitivity investigation for collector has also been done. All expressions of various parameters have been fed to computational code developed in MATLAB – 2015a for May month of New Delhi climatic situation. Heat transfer coefficients, exergy gain and exergy efficiency values have been estimated for different cases in which one input variable is varied keeping other input parameters as constant and the computation is continued till the completion of estimation for all input parameters. The exergy gain for collector, exergy gain for NCPCETC-DS and exergy efficiency for NCPCETC-DS have been estimated to be most sensitive with regard to concentration ratio having mean sensitivity figure values as 1.88, 1.97 and 1.94 in that order.

This paper deals with the exergy analysis of single slope solar desalination unit combined with N number of compound parabolic concentrator integrated evacuated tubular collectors (NCPCETC-SU) considering New Delhi climate. An exhaustive computation considering each month of year is carried out. The methodology consists of feeding all fundamental equations with relevant data to MATLAB code and presenting the output in the suitable form. Results of NCPCETC-SU are compared with results of SU incorporated with evacuated tubular collectors (NETC-SU). Concludingly, the annual exergy and daily exergy efficiency for NCPCETC-SU are higher by 36.51% and 30.81% than NETC-SU for same mass flow rate, N and water depth under similar climatic situation. The annual freshwater output is higher by 16.81% and freshwater cost is higher by 9.85% at 2% rate of interest for NCPCETC-SU than NETC-SU respectively. Further, the freshwater cost of NCPCETC-SU can be diminished by increasing the concentration ratio.