Desalination 219 (2008) 222230

Performance evaluation of a modified design of a single slope

solar still
Salah Abdallaha, Omar Badranb, Mazen M. Abu-Khaderc*
a

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, Applied Science University, Amman, Jordan
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, cDepartment of Chemical Engineering, FET,
Al-Balqa Applied University, PO Box 15008, Marka, 11134 Amman, Jordan
Tel. +962 (6) 489-2345; Fax: +962 (6) 489-2492; email: mak@accessme.com
Received 5 October 2006; Accepted 11 May 2007

Abstract
There is a strong need to look at various possible designs that can be implemented to improve the single slope
solar still performance through increasing the production rate of distilled water. Design modifications were
introduced to the conventional solar still, involving the installation of reflecting mirrors on all interior sides, replacing
the flat basin by a step-wise basin, and by coupling the conventional solar still with a sun tracking system. The
inclusion of internal mirrors improved the system thermal performance up to 30%, while step-wise basin enhanced
the performance up to 180% and finally the coupling of the step-wise basin with sun tracking system gave the highest
thermal performance with an average of 380%.
Keywords: Solar still; Sun tracking devices; Thermal performance; Solar energy; Design modifications

1. Introduction
The supply of drinking water is one of the
major problems in developing countries. Clean
water is a basic human necessity, and without
water the life will be impossible. Nowadays the
pollution in rivers and lakes by industrial effluents and sewage disposal resulted in scarcity of
fresh water in many big cities around the world.
It is known that only 3% of water on planet earth
*Corresponding author.

is fresh where only 1% is available for humanity

for use and the rest is polar ice.
The Jordan water authority has given utmost
priority to arid areas water supply in their future
development plans whereas Jordan lies in a high
solar insulation band and vast solar potential can
be exploited to convert saline water to potable
water [1].
Single slope solar stills are one of the solar
devices which can be used for fresh water production. They are considered as one of the

0011-9164/08/$ See front matter 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V.

doi:10.1016/j.desal.2007.05.015

S. Abdallah et al. / Desalination 219 (2008) 222230

cheapest solutions for purifying saline/brackish

water and suitable for the Middle East and Africa
due to their low cost and ease of maintenance [2].
A large number of solar distillation stills have
been developed in the last decade. These include
single and multiple effect stills, and soaked-cloth
inclined stills. Extensive reviews on the use of
various types of distillation systems, and a survey
of various solar thermal collectors and applications were reported [38]. Many experimental
and theoretical studies were conducted on single
basin solar stills to test the thermal performance
of different enhancement parameters. The effectiveness of different absorbing materials in a solar
still to increase the productivity of water was
studied using a single-basin solar still with double
slopes [6,911]. Al-Hayek and Badran [6], Phadatare and Verma [4], and Tanaka and Nakatake
[8] found that the productivity of fresh water by
solar distillation depends mainly on the intensity
of solar radiation, the sunshine hours and the type
of the still.
Applications of thermal modeling of a solar
still were reported by several researchers [1218].
Badran and Abu-Khader [18] conducted an
experimental work on a single slope solar still
and evaluated its thermal performance under
Jordanian climate. The authors presented a comprehensive theoretical model with detailed heat
transfer analysis. The analysis included energy
balances for each of the three main components
of the still system; such as; the solar still glass
cover, the solar basin bottom plate (basin liner),
and the solar still water mass.
The main drawback of a traditional solar still
was the low amount of distilled water produced
per unit area which makes the single-basin solar
still unacceptable in some instances. Therefore,
there is great scope to improve the efficiency of
such type of solar stills.
The objective of the present study was to
improve the performance of a traditional single
slope solar still through three design modifications: addition of internal reflecting mirrors on

223

all interior sides of still, using step-wise water

basin instead of flat basin, and coupling the solar
still with a sun tracking system. These modifications can increase the solar still capability to
capture more solar energy.

2. Experimental set-up
2.1. Solar still design modifications
Various system modifications of single slope
solar stills were suggested. Two different stills
(i.e. step-wise basin and simple flat basin) and an
electromechanical sun tracking system were
designed and constructed by engineering workshops at the Applied Science University (ASU).
Also, the stills components were selected from
locally available materials at the workshops.
The design modifications involved were:
(a) fixing interior reflecting mirrors, (b) manufacturing a step-wise water basin instead of a flat
basin, and (c) coupling the step-wise solar still
with a sun tracking system.
First of all, it was important to evaluate the
performance of the traditional solar still design as
a reference. This helps to measure the improvements due to the new modifications. The traditional single slope solar still has an inclined top
cover of 32E (Fig. 1) made of glass (4 mm
thickness), with an interior surface made of a
waterproof membrane. The exterior surfaces of
the still were painted black to improve absorption
of the suns rays. Water was poured into the still
to partially fill the basin. The glass cover allows
the solar radiation to pass into the still, which was
mostly absorbed by the black basin. The water
begins to heat up and the moisture content of the
air trapped between the water surface and the
glass cover increases. The basin also radiates
energy in the infra-red region which was reflected
back into the still by the glass cover, trapping the
solar energy inside the still. The heated water
vapor evaporates from the basin and condenses
on the inside of the glass cover. Condensed water

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S. Abdallah et al. / Desalination 219 (2008) 222230

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of a single slope

solar still.

Fig. 3. Isometric view of the step-wise water basin.

Fig. 2. Perspective view of the solar still basin.

trickles down the inclined glass cover to an

interior collection trough and out to a storage
bottle. Fig. 1 presents a traditional design of a
single slope solar still which contains internal
mirrors on all sides of still. The basin of the still,
which accommodates the untreated water, has a
volume of 69.369.36.3 cm3. Fig. 2 shows the
schematic diagram of the flat basin.
The first modification made on the traditional
still was the addition of reflecting mirrors on the
inside walls of the still (i.e. back and sides) in
order to minimize the amount of energy lost. AlHayek and Badran [6] indicated that adoption of
mirrors on the inside walls of the solar stills will
enhance the production of distilled water and
improve the efficiency through controlling the
radiation losses from the still basin. Tanaka and

Nakatake [8] found that the internal and the

external reflectors can remarkably increase the
distillate productivity throughout the year; also
they found that the increase in the daily amounts
of distillate by adding the internal and the external reflectors to the single-slope basin type still
for the entire year would be around 48%.
Fig. 3 represents the new modified design for
the basin. It has a step-wise shape to replace the
common flat type basin. The new basin shape
provide an extra 40% of the contact surface
which will definitely provide more heat and mass
transfer area. Finally, Fig. 4 illustrates the complete designed system in three dimensions where
it shows the solar still with step-wise basin
coupled with a sun tracking system. The installation of a sun tracking system helped to position
the distiller to the best location to gain maximum

S. Abdallah et al. / Desalination 219 (2008) 222230

(a)

(b)

Table 1
Collected distilled water using different fixed system
configurations
Tested fixed system
configuration

(c)

Fig. 4. Three-dimensional view of the sun tracking

distiller. (a) base, motor and bearing. (b) Distiller. (c) All
involved parts of the distiller and tracking system.

solar energy. The performance of the modified

still was also evaluated by the quantity of the
distilled water collected, as shown in Tables 1
and 2. The amount of the incident solar radiation
(sun energy) on the titled glass was measured
using a pyranometer during the experimental
work conducted. The pyranometer was connected
to the data logger connected to a computer.
Pyranometer readings were recorded every 5 min.
The stored collected data were processed using
Microsoft Excel.
2.2. Automatic sun tracking system
The majority of authors used a closed loop
method of control to design sun tracking systems
[1921]. In this work, the design of one axis

225

Day 1 (11/5/2006)
Without mirrors
With mirrors
Step-wise basin
Day 2 (12/5/2006)
Without mirrors
With mirrors
Step-wise basin
Day 3 (13/5/2006)
Without mirrors
With mirrors
Step-wise basin

Collected
distilled water
L/day/m2

Gain
(%)

1.51
1.796
4.684

18.93
210.14

1.255
1.643
4.428

30
193.24

1.408
2.077
3.918

37.57
159.46

Table 2
Collected distilled water using fixed system without
mirrors and a modified step-wise solar still with sun
tracking systems
Tested system
configuration
Day 1 (3/6/2006)
Without mirrors
Step-wise basin with
sun tracking system
Day 2 (4/6/2006)
Without mirrors
Step-wise basin with
sun tracking system
Day 3 (5/6/2006)
Without mirrors
Step-wise basin with
sun tracking system

Collected distilled Gain

(%)
water L/day/m2
1.082
4.724

336.79

0.969
5.684

425.47

0.828
5.326

392.45

tracking system was performed using an open

loop method of control based upon programmable
logic controller (PLC). The objective for using
this sun tracking system is to improve the thermal
performance, and to increase the distillation

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S. Abdallah et al. / Desalination 219 (2008) 222230

Fig. 5. Block diagram of one axis sun tracking PLC system.

productivity of the modified solar still. The block

diagram of the hardware components of the
tracking system is shown in Fig. 5. The PLC
system used was fairly simple and cheap in cost.
The PLC has a programmable memory in which
instructions were stored to implement the various
functions used to control the tracking motors. The
electro-mechanical system shown in Fig. 5 was
designed to rotate the distiller around the vertical
axis by means of a 36 V DC motor and a spur
gear. The calculated required positions of the
tracking surface, step-wise distiller, around the
vertical axis, and (surface azimuth angle) were
determined by computer software for the city of
Amman. These positions were inserted in the
PLC. The PLC controls the motor which moves
the tracking surface into the required positions
[22,23]. The still would be rotated from east to
west for the period of the experiment.
2.3. Experimental procedure
Experiments done on the fixed conventional
design of the solar still were carried out on successive days during the period 1113 May 2006,
and experiments for the modified still were carried out during the period 35 June 2006. Each
experiment started from 8:00 am in the morning
to 6:00 pm in the afternoon. The electrical and
electronic parts were tested and calibrated before
being used on the various designs of the solar
stills. The experimental work was fully carried
out in the Renewable Energy Laboratory (REL)
at the Applied Science University in Amman.
The first part of this research work was to test
a traditional flat basin single slope still in a fixed
position towards the south. Five different thermocouples were installed on the solar still system at

different locations. These locations were: (a) a

basin base to measure the temperature of the
plate, (b) inner surface of the glass, (c) outer surface of the glass, (d) water temperature in the
basin and (e) water vapor. The second part of this
research work was to couple the solar still with a
sun tracking system. This modification was introduced to increase the thermal performance and
the distillation productivity.
3. Results and discussion
Figs. 68 show the variation in water temperature, vapour temperature and the amount of
distilled water collected through typical summer
day (13/5/2006) from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm.
Experiments were carried out on three successive
working days to validate the results obtained.
Figs. 6 and 7 show an increase in the water
temperature during early hours of the day until it
reaches the maximum water temperature around
mid-noon at the highest solar radiation, then
decreases as the sun sets. These figures show that
a wide temperature change was recorded. The
water temperature was around 20EC early mornings, reaching up to 68EC as a maximum temperature at mid-noon. Therefore, at the mid-noon
period, the thermal losses of the solar still were
minimal, and the thermal performance increased
proportionally. This is attributed to the increase
of the surrounding ambient temperature of the
still and higher solar radiation. The figures also
show that installing internal side mirrors gave
better performance because these mirrors make
use of the energy reflected on all sides of the
solar still. On the other hand, redesigning the flat
water basin into a step-wise basin gave higher
thermal performance than both with and without

S. Abdallah et al. / Desalination 219 (2008) 222230

Fig. 6. Water base temperature variations for traditional

and modified solar stills.

Fig. 7. Vapor temperature variations for traditional and

modified solar stills.

Fig. 8. Collected distilled water for traditional solar stills.

227

Fig. 9. Measured amount of sun energy dropped on the

titled glass by using a pyranometer during a full working
day (13/5/2006).

mirrors conventional stills. This was due to two

reasons (1) a smaller air volume trapped inside
the still chamber than in the traditional still and
therefore heating up the trapped air will be much
faster, and (2) the step-wise basin provides higher
heat and mass transfer surface area than the flat
basin.
The thermal improvements due to the design
modifications were evident through the production rates in Table 1 for three successive days.
Fig. 9 shows the change in the energy intensity
during the full working day (13/5/2006). It is
clearly shown that the hourly solar radiation was
high at noon. Also the power gain was varied
from minimum values in the morning (i.e. low
ambient temperature and low solar radiation) to
the maximum at noon where the solar radiation
and the ambient temperature are high.
Figs. 1012 record the water and vapour temperatures and distilled water collected for conventional and modified stills, respectively. Figs. 10
and 11 show narrower temperature changes during the experimental hours for the modified
design (stepwise model), which means that the
maximum temperature was maintained for several
hours between 11:00 am up to 3:00 pm due to the
increase in the amount of energy absorbed by the
solar still system. It gave a higher production rate
reaching 380% over the traditional fixed still.

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S. Abdallah et al. / Desalination 219 (2008) 222230

Fig. 10. Water temperature variation for traditional and

modified design solar stills.

Fig. 11. Vapour temperature variation for traditional and

modified design solar stills.

Fig. 12. Collected distilled water for traditional and modified design solar stills.

Fig. 13. Measured amount of sun energy dropped on the

titled glass by using a pyranometer during full working
day (3/6/2006).

Fig. 13 shows the change in the hourly solar

intensity. The impact of the solar intensity was
clear where at high solar radiation more distilled
water can be produced as shown in the yield of
13/5/2006 compared with the 3/6/2006 for the
traditional still without mirrors; also the solar
intensity was higher on 13/5/2005 (Tables 1 and
2). The effect of using sun tracking system on
still productivity was clear in the production rate
during three successive working days (Table 2).
The sun tracking system results in an increase in
the productivity to about 380% more than a tradi-

tional fixed still. This was because the sun tracker

system increases the receiving area of the incident
solar radiation inside the still, which will enhance
the heat and mass transfer between the water and
the basin and improve the thermal efficiency of
the still. This phenomenon has been noticed by
Tanaka and Nakatake [8]. They found that the
solar energy absorption on the first partition as
well as the distillate productivity of their proposed simple basin solar still can be significantly
increased by rotating the still just once a day
towards the sun.

S. Abdallah et al. / Desalination 219 (2008) 222230

4. Conclusions
The performance of a basin type solar still
system with three different design modifications
was investigated. The experimental results clearly
show that the thermal performance of a traditional
single slope still can be considerably improved
through the design modifications. Installing internal reflecting mirrors gave an average of 30%
increase in the amount of distilled water produced
when compared with a classical fixed solar still
system. Modifying the still design from a flat
basin into step-wise basin gave a higher production rate with an average increase of 180%. Also,
coupling the modified still design with a sun
tracking system gave further improvement,
reaching up to a 380% increase in the production
rate of distilled water.
A step-wise basin-type solar still integrated
with a sun tracking mechanism was presented as
a potential option for high performance solar
distillation. It can be utilized for industrial applications for economical bulk production of distilled water for battery charging, chemical
laboratories, educational institutions, and for gas
station services.

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