DESALINATION

ELSEVIER Desalination 169 (2004) 121-127

www.elsevier.com/locate/desal

The effect of using different designs of solar stills on water

distillation

Imad A1-Hayeka, Omar O. Badran b*

Al-Balqh Applied University, FET, "Basie Science Department, bMechanical Engineering Department,
Amman, Jordan
Tel. +962 (6) 5679773; Fax + 962 (6) 4613452; email: o badran@yahoo.com

Received 6 November 2002; accepted 22 December 2003

Abstract
Solar distillation is one of the important methods of utilizing the solar energy for the supply of potable water to
small communities where the natural supply of fresh water is inadequate or of poor quality, and where sunshine is
abundant. Solar energy utilization in two different types of solar stills is considered, and factors that influence the
productivity of solar stills are discussed. The present investigation showed that the productivity of asymmetric
greenhouse type still (ASGHT) having mirrors on its inside walls was higher than that of the symmetric greenhouse
type still (SGHT) and more efficient. It was found that the distilled water output of the asymmetrical greenhouse
type was 20% higher than that of symmetric greenhouse type. Performance characteristics of the two stills showed
that the temperature at the water surface is closely related to the incident solar radiation, and the productivity &the
stills can be increased with decreasing water depth, and by the addition of dye.
Keywords: Solar energy; Solar still; Solar distillation; Distilled water; Jordan

I. Introduction ful organisms. In locations where there is plenty

The consumption of fresh water is increasing
all over the world, mainly due to the population
explosion and the rapid industrial growth. This
causes a serious leakage of fresh water. Fresh
water is essential in domestic life and used in
agriculture as well as industry. But water is usually
contaminated with chemical impurities and harm-
*Corresponding author.
of solar energy and where sources of brackish
water are available, supplies of small amounts of
fresh water can be produced at reasonable cost by
solar stills which are relatively inexpensive to
build and easy to maintain. Also solar distillation
is used on a small commercial scale to supply small
communities in isolated areas. The first known
use of stills dates back to 1551 when it was used
byArab alchemists. Other scientists and naturalists
used stills over the coming centuries including

0011-9164/04/$- See front matter © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

doi: 10.1016/j.desal.2004.08.013
122 I. Al-Hayek. 0.0. Badran /Desalination 169 (2004) 121-127
Della Porta (1589), Lavoisier (1862), and Mauchot
(1869) [1,2]. The first "conventional" solar still
plant was built in 1872 by a Swedish engineer
Charles Wilson in the mining community of Las
Salinas in what is now northern Chile. This still
was a large basin-type still used for supplying
fresh water with very high salinity (4-fold of
seawater) of the nitrate mine effluents to supply
with fresh water the workers of the mine and the
nearby inhabitants. The plant used wooden bays
which had blackened bottoms using logwood dye
and alum [3]. Many design variations exist, and a
wide variety of construction materials are used
[4-8]. The amount of distilled water that can be
produced varies quite dramatically with the geo-
graphical position, the sun's position, prevailing
meteorological conditions, solar still design, and
operational techniques [4]. Some researchers [9-
13] found that other parameters such as water
depth, salinity, black dye, wind speed and direc-
tion have an effect on the output of the solar stills.
The basic principles of solar water distillation
are simple, yet effective, as distillation replicates
the way nature purifies water. The sun's energy
heats water to the point of evaporation. As the water
evaporates, water vapor rises, condensing on the
glass surface for collection. This process removes
impurities such as salts and heavy metals, as well
as destroys microbiological organisms. The end
result is water cleaner than the purest rainwater.
Heating saline water can be done using fossil fuels
like oil. But fossil fuels are slowly declining with
time because of the rapid consump-tion used in
technology development. Solar energy is the best
alternative heating energy source. It is inexhaust-
ible, clean and available in almost all parts of the
world. The use of solar energy is however more
economical than the use of fossil fuels in remote
areas having low population densities, low rainfall
and abundant available solar energy. Solar stills
can easily provide enough water for family drinking
and cooking needs. The productivity of fresh water
by solar distillation depends drastically on the
intensity of solar radiation and the sunshine time
interval during the day. Considering that, Jordan
is a suitable place for making extensive researches
on solar distillation [14].
The present solar stills are passive solar dis-
tillers that only need sunshine to operate. There
are no moving parts to wear out. The distilled
water from the present solar stills does not acquire
the "flat" taste of commercially distilled water
since the water is not boiled (which lowers pH).
They use natural evaporation which is the rain-
water process. But it is recommended to add small
amounts of minerals or salts to the distilled water,
since the minerals found in water may be healthy.
Lost minerals can also be replaced by trickling
the distilled water through a bed of marble chips.
In this paper we have studied the productivity
of fresh water by distillation using two different
designs of stills: first, asymmetrical greenhouse
type (ASGHT) with mirrors, and the second
symmetrical greenhouse type (SGHT), under the
climatic conditions of Jordan. The objective of
this paper is to improve the quality and increase
the quantity of drinking water for people living
in remote desert areas in Jordan.
2. Experimental set-up
Two different basin-type solar stills (Figs. 1
and 2) were designed from locally available
materials and locally manufactured components.
Both solar stills have 1 m 2 basin areas for com-
parison purposes, are made of 1.5 mm galvanized
stainless-steel sheets, and covered with 4 mm
transparent glass. The bases of the stills were
blackened on their interior surfaces to enable
maximum absorption of solar radiation. The
bottom and sides of the two solar stills were
insulated from outside with 100 mm rock wool
and enclosed in a wooden box to minimize the
heat loss with the surrounding. Whole assemblies
of both stills are made air tight with the help of a
rubber gasket and siliconized acrylic sealant.
Thermocouples were fixed in different posi-
tions to measure inside and outside glass cover,
 I. Al-Hayek, 0.0. Badran /Desalination 169 (2004) 121-127
Black pa&ted I basin by the interior mirrors which concentrate
Rack wooi insulation
stainiess steel basin
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the asymmetrical green-
house type solar still.
Black p&ted insufarian
stainless steel basin
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the symmetrical greenhouse
type solar still.
solarbasin water,ambient air, andvapor tempera-
tures.All experimentswere conductedduring the
month of August. Data were usedto comparethe
relative performancesof the two types of stills.
The solar still glasscoverswere tilted at an angle
of 35” [9], andthe depthofwater in the basinwas
maintained at 2 cm. The distillate yield was
measuredby scaledflask everyhour.Daily collec-
tion of fresh water can range from 3 to 5.5 l/m3.
The presentASGHT hasatop covermadeof glass,
with the interior surfaceof the walls of still made
of mirrors in order to reflect solar radiation
incident on them onto the basin. Water to be
123
cleanedis poured into the still to fill the basin.
The glasscover allows the solar radiation (short-
wave) to pass into the still, which is mostly
absorbedby theblackenedbase.The waterbegins
to heat up and the moisture content of the air is
trappedbetweenthe water surfaceand the glass
cover,thus the glass cover trapsthe solar energy
insidethe still (“greenhouse”effect).The basealso
radiates energy in the infrared region (long
wavelength), which is reflected back onto the
heat energyat the base.The heatedwater evapor-
atesfrom the basin and condenseson the inside
of the glass cover. In this processthe salts and
microbes that were in the original water are left
behind. The condensedwater trickles dowu the
inclinedglasscoverto an interior collectiontrough
and is delivered to a storagebottle. The still is
filled eachmorning,andthetotal waterproduction
for the day is collected in the evening. Water is
addedto the stills via a supply fill port. Once the
still basin hasbeenfilled, excesswater will flow
out of an overflow port.
3. Results and discussion
The temperatureof thebasin water,inside and
outside surfaces of the glass cover, vapor and
ambienttemperaturevs. time for the two stills are
shown in Figs. 3 and 4, for an experiment con-
ducted on the 6th day of August. It can be seen
from Figs. 3 and4 that similar trendswere noticed
for the two stills, where the temperature rises
during the daytime up to the maximum value at
14:00h, andthen it decreases.Theseresultswere
similar to the findings of many investigators
[5,7,9,12,15].It wasnoticed thatthe asymmetrical
greenhousetype still operated at higher temp-
eraturethanthe symmetrical greenhousetype still
dueto the presenceof mirrors, which reducedthe
heatenergyloss in a solar still. Fig. 5a shows the
dependenceof theproduction rate on the ambient
temperature,solar radiation, and the hourly yield
produced on the 6th of August for both the
124 1. Al-Hayek, 0.0. Badran /Desalination 169 (2004) 121-127

-,,t-vapor temp (~)

= Waterletup {~) .~
c Innero:~ar~emp( ~ C ) ~.p~,=~'t~..~

70,

.~6o,
ZSO,
40,

30,

8 9 I0 11 12 ~3 14 15 16 17 t8 |9
Time of day (hour)

Fig. 3. Hourly variation of temperatures for the asymmetric greenhousetype solar still.

80

~ 60 ......

~. 40. •

30" ~

20 .......•
8 § 1"0 il I"2 1"3 i"4 1"5 1"6 1"7 18 l i~
Time of day (hour)
Fig. 4. Hourly variation of temperatures for the symmetric greenhouse type solar still.

ASGHT and SGHT solar stills. In general, the
productivity increases during the daytime as solar
radiation intensity increases until it reaches the
maximum value at 14:00 h, after that the decrease
in temperature gradually reduces the production
rate. The mirrors inside the solar still have a sig-
nificant effect on increasing the productivity of
the distilled water, which is attributed to the
concentration of the reflected solar radiation incident
on them onto the water (Figs. 3 and 4). The com-
parison of the productivity of fresh water between
the two types of stills for a six-day period is shown
in Fig. 5b. The production of the asymmetrical
greenhouse type still is higher than that of the
symmetrical greenhouse type still. Fig. 5b shows
that the overall trend of the yield for both stills is
consistent with the daily collection (Fig. 5a).
Figs. 6 and 7 represent hourly variation of
productivity of the ASGHT and SGHT solar stills
respectively, using different water depths (i.e. 1.5,
3, 4 cm). The production rate increases with the
decrease in water depth, because of the increase
 L Al-Hayek, 0.0. Badran /Desalination 169 (2004) 121-127 125

1400 ] .-.- ASGHT still

a,1200 -t ~ SGHTstill
/ -*- Solar J
i.,,,J~-'~*~
\\
[ 1000
[ 800
~ 600 400

0' 1

8 9 10 11 :12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Time (hour)
Ambient temperatures (°C)
Fig. 5a. Fresh water accumulated and the solar radition intensity during daytime on August 6.

7000.
ASGHT
36000.
"t3

~sooo.
~4000.
~- aooo.
.o
~ 2000.
~ t000,

8 9 10 I"I I"2 t3 14 1'5 1'6 17 18 19

' J f • • • • '~1

TimeOfday (hour)
Fig. 5b. Fresh water accumulated for 6 days during the month of August.

of the solar radiation absorbed by the bases, which
decreases the thermal capacity of the stills. From
Figs. 6 and 7, it can be concluded that while the
water depth is not a critical parameter it should
be as small as possible.
The effect of a dye on the performance of solar
stills is shown in Fig. 8. It can be seen that the
productivity has been increased by the addition
of black dye to the water in the stills. This may be
attributed to the increase of the absorbency of the
solar energy entering the stills by the water itself.
Thus, the water temperature in the presence of
dye is much higher than that in the absence of the
dye. The experimental work carded out by A1-
Tamimi [13] indicated that the black dye addition
enhanced the still productivity.
126 I. Al-Hayek, 0.0. Badran /Desalination 169 (2004) 121-127

1200,

1000" /

--..,,41-~3 em

200.
4Cal

o ....... ~, ~ 1"o ~'1 1'2 1"3 1:~ 1~ ~'6 1~ i~ i~

Time (hour)
Fig. 6. The effect of water depth of the productivity of fresh water for the asymmetrical greenhouse type solar still.

zt
~300.

100

8 9 t0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Time (hour)

Fig. 7. The effect of water depth of the productivity of fresh water for the symmetrical greenhouse type solar still.

1100~ ASGHT

~ 900

~ 700-

~ 300,
10C
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Time (hour)
Fig. 8. The effect of dye on the production rate.
 I. Al-Hayek, 0.0. Badran /Desalination 169 (2004) 121-127
The calculated efficiency of the ASGHT is
about 56% and for the SGHT is about 45%. The
efficiencies were calculated by the following
equations:
h (%) = Qe/Q,
Qe=me .L
where Qe is the amount of energy utilized in
vaporizing water in the still (MJ/mVd), Q, is the
incident solar energy on the still (MJ/m2/d) - - the
typical value for Jordan is 21 MJ/m 2, m e is the
daily distilled water output (kg/m2/d), and L is the
latent heat of vaporization of water (MJ/kg).
The overall efficiency for the asymmetrical
greenhouse type still is nearly 11% higher than
that o f the symmetrical greenhouse type still,
while the production rate increased by 20%. The
difference caused by the increase in the net solar
radiation received by water in the basin, that is
due to the high rate of reflections from the mirrors
which minimized the heat energy loss.
4. Conclusion
Solar energy is the best alternative heating
energy source. It is inexhaustible, clean and avail-
able in almost all parts of the world. Solar stills'
inherent simplicity, ability to supply fresh water
to remote areas where no fresh water is available,
and its environmental friendliness makes it a tech-
nology that is ripe for much wider use.
The findings in the present study indicated that
adoption of mirrors on the inside walls of the
ASGHT still enhanced the production of distilled
water more than the SGHT, which improved the
efficiency through controlling the radiation losses
127
from the still basin and by the proper utilization
of the incident sun radiations on the still. Also the
decrease of water depth and the addition of dye
improved the productivity of both stills.
It can be concluded that the use of solar water
distillation promises to enhance the quality of life
and to improve health standards in arid areas in
Jordan.
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