Experimental Study on Productivity of Different Designs of Solar Stills in Hot Climatic Conditions

Because of the large increase in energy and water demand for agriculture, industry and human needs, and the increase in water pollution problems due to urbanization, industry and human activities, the demand for potable water has increased. Solar desalination is an alternative approach to save energy and converting saltwater into high-quality drinking water using solar energy. This work aims to design, manufacture, and test two types of solar still images (i.e. single slope and transparent tent) in order to improve their heat absorption and thereby improve efficiency under the prevailing hot climatic conditions of Al-Medina Al-Monawra. Accordingly, solar energy has been used for distillation purposes for saltwater purification to be used for drinking and irrigation in arid areas. Although solar devices are still simple in design, their values and advantages are very high. It also relies solely on renewable energy sources that are clean, free and unpolluted. In addition, economic analysis and comparisons of water productivity between the single slope solar still and the transparent tent have been presented. The results have indicated that the productivity of water per square meters per day for the transparent tent solar still is higher than the one of the single-slope solar still by about 6%. From economic analysis, the recovery period for both systems has been found to be about 3.5 years.