Solar-powered desalination holds the potential to meet rising water needs. Most of the global desalination methods require a lot of electrical energy that mostly comes from non-renewable energy resources, including coal, natural gas, and oil. Carbon emissions from these sources cause breathing problems and ozone depletion. An empirical study is performed to evaluate the optically active desalination process. The suggested mechanism moves the light funnel axially regardless of incident light intensity to maintain the water reservoir temperature to a fixed level to perform desalination. To reduce tracking error, control systems with the triple-axis movement of Fresnel lenses are developed using an optimization algorithm employing the least-squares criterion. It also maintains the temperature of the water reservoir at 250°C by absorbing total incident irradiance through a copper slab by incorporating a customized nano honeycomb layer. A textured glass surface on top of the reservoir reduces solar reflections. The light rays are concentrated by top Fresnel lenses, while the bottom Fresnel lens produces a parallel beam of concentrated light that falls on a copper slab inside the reservoir, vaporizing the desalinated water to maintain a clean water supply. Total dissolved solids (TDS), the potential of hydrogen (pH), and microbial measurements are made before and after the desalination process. To increase the rate of desalination and decrease the boiling point of water, a low-pressure suction pump is used. This low-cost and environmentally friendly project produces pure drinking water and could be installed at any location.

This paper presents a novel system design that considerably improves the entrapment of terrestrial ultraviolet (UV) irradiance in a customized honeycomb structure to produce hydrogen at a standard rate of 7.57 slpm for places with a UV index > 11. Thermolysis of high salinity water is done by employing a solid oxide electrolyzer cell (SOEC), which comprises three customized, novel active optical subsystems to filter, track, and concentrate terrestrial UV solar irradiance by Fresnel lenses. The output of systems is fed to a desalinator, a photovoltaic system to produce electrical energy, and a steam generator with modified surface morphology to generate the required superheated steam for the SOEC. A simulation in COMSOL Multiphysics ver. 5.6 has shown that a customized honeycomb structure, when incorporated on the copper–nickel surface of a steam generator, improves its absorptance coefficient up to 93.43% (48.98%—flat case). This results in generating the required superheated steam of 650 °C with a designed active optical system comprising nine Fresnel lenses (7 m²) that offer the concentration of 36 suns on the honeycomb structure of the steam generator as input. The required 1.27 kW of electrical power is obtained by concentrating the photovoltaic system using In_0.33Ga_0.67N/Si/InN solar cells. This production of hydrogen is sustainable and cost effective, as the estimated cost over 5 years by the proposed system is 0.51 USD/kg, compared to the commercially available system, which costs 3.18 USD/kg.