The effect of the water depth on the productivity for single and double basin double slope glass solar stills

This paper presents a new approach to enhance the productivity of the solar still by introducing glass as the basin material. Single and double basin double slope solar stills of same basin area were fabricated using glass. The experiments were carried out by varying the water depths from 1 to 5 cm under both insulated and un-insulated conditions. The production of single basin is more than the double basin during the heating period and double basin is more during the cooling period. The performance of the double basin double slope solar still was higher than the single basin double slope solar still under insulated and un-insulated conditions. The productivity of the stills was more at the lowest water depth of 1 cm. Of the two sets of experiments which were conducted under insulated and un-insulated conditions, insulated stills gave more production. At 1 cm water depth, double basin insulated and un-insulated stills gave 1738% and 8.12% higher production than the single basin still. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.