Investigation of Factors Affecting Performance of Solar Still

Clean water has been at a fairly unchanged level since the beginning of the earth,
however, life forms on earth increase as each seconds pass. Solar still is developed to
purify water using solar energy and make use of processes such as evaporation and
condensation. However, there are many factors affecting the performance of a solar still.
The main purposes of this project is to investigate the factors mentioned. Angle of glass
cover inclination has a significant effect on solar still performance, the angle of glass
cover should be as close to the angle of azimuth at the location as possible. Solar still is
able to capture the most sun irradiance when sun makes a perpendicular direction on the
glass cover. On the other hand, presence of heat storage material in solar still increase
the heat capacity of water and thus increase the yield of clean water from the system. 10°
inclination cover is able to produce approximately 500ml of water from experiment in
this research. However, the theoretical yield is calculated as 840ml. 10° being closest to
experiment location, 4°N has the highest yield.