Performance analysis of solar stills based on various factors affecting the productivity-A review

Although, more than two-thirds of the Earth is covered by water, shortage of potable water is a serious issue that many countries suffer from. Furthermore, the worldwide rapid growth of industry and population has resulted in a large boom in demand for fresh water. The solar still, in many respects, is an ideal source of fresh water for both drinking and agriculture: it is one of the most important and technically viable applications of solar energy. There are many types of solar still: the simplest and most proven is the basin type. Investigations showed that the basin-type solar still has been found to be of limited performance. Numerous experimental and numerical investigations on basic types of solar still have been reported in various literatures. An extensive review for solar desalination systems has been carried out in this paper. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.