Water scarcity has become a major global concern due to increasing population growth, industrialization, and depletion of freshwater resources. Solar desalination is considered an eco-friendly and sustainable solution, especially for rural and off-grid regions where conventional water treatment facilities are limited. However, conventional solar stills suffer from low productivity, which restricts their practical application. In this study, a fully integrated solar still system was designed and fabricated by incorporating a flat plate collector, front-wall reflector, and passive evaporative cooling arrangement. The system was experimentally tested under natural climatic conditions over seven consecutive days to evaluate temperature variation, distillate yield, and overall system performance. Key parameters such as basin temperature, glass temperature, water temperature, and hourly freshwater production were monitored and analyzed. The experimental results showed significant improvement in freshwater productivity compared to conventional solar stills. The fully integrated system achieved a maximum distillate yield of 6000 ml/m²/day, which is nearly two times higher than the conventional system. The enhanced performance is mainly attributed to improved solar absorption, efficient evaporation, and enhanced condensation mechanisms, demonstrating the effectiveness of the integrated solar still design.
Sundararaj et al. (Thu,) studied this question.