Boosting Solar Still Performance Through Condenser, Fan, and Reflectors Integration

Water scarcity, exacerbated by population growth, climate change, and resource overuse, is a global crisis, particularly in remote areas with limited infrastructure. Solar stills, which harness abundant solar energy, offer a simple and effective solution for purifying water, providing essential access to clean water in sun-rich but water-poor regions. The goal of this research is to enhance the efficiency of solar stills by implementing a novel design that incorporates an external air-cooled condenser, an internal circulating fan, and both internal and external reflectors. To achieve this, a conventional basin-type solar still was designed and constructed, featuring a <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$1 ~\mathrm{m}^{2}$</tex> effective area with a glass cover angled at 30° from the horizontal. Condensed water is collected either through the condensers or by flowing down the sloped glass cover into a collection trough. The results demonstrated that integrating only the condenser increased the production rate by 29.09 %. Adding both the fan and condenser resulted in a 70.65% increase, while incorporating the fan, condenser, and both internal and external reflectors boosted output by 135.47 %.