Solar still productivity enhancement

The distilled water productivity of the single basin solar still is very li mited. Some methods have to be developed to improve this productivity. Usin g black rubber or black gravel materials within a single sloped solar still as a storage medium is examined in this work. To study experimentally the effect of different parameters such as rubber thickness and gravel size und er the same operating conditions, four identical still units are designed a nd constructed. The experimental results showed that black rubber (10 mm th ick) improves the productivity by 20% at the conditions of 60 l/m(2) brine volume and 15 degrees glass cover angle. Also, using black gravel of 20-30 mm size improves the productivity by 19% at the conditions of 20 l/m(2) bri ne volume and 15 degrees of glass cover angle. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Lt d. All rights reserved.