Experimental Measurements on the Effect of Solar Still Basin Height on its Performance

Abstract

Due to the water scarcity crisis, many technologies are used to solve these problems, one of these technologies is a single basin solar still, which considers the simplest and cheapest technology. It uses for converting available salt or brackish water into potable water. This paper presents the experimental work conducted on conventional basin type Solar Still to investigate the effect of some design and operating parameters on the performance of the still. In this paper, two single basins are built to study the effect of the glass height from the basin bottom. All conditions of taking the experimental results are taken at the same time. The temperature of ambient, water, vapor, and outlet glass is measured from 8.00 to 17.00 of day time every one hour. The productivity of the distilled water and solar intensity is measured as well. The study showed that the productivity increased by 60% per day when the gap distance between the water surface and cover reduced from 26.0 cm to 6.0 cm measured from the front (south) wall of the solar still, or (from 37.0 cm to 17 cm measured from the center of glass cover) at the same angle 24° and 2 cm water depth.