Solar still desalination systems: A comparative study and proposition of a new design based on the internet of things technique

Abstract

Solar still is the simplest form of solar desalination system, which allows freshwater production from a clean source of energy (solar radiation). Major research in this area focuses on improving the amount of daily production of desalinated water. Thus, a compromise between productivity, simplicity and economic feasibility should be taken into account. This work presents a brief overview of solar desalination systems existing in the literature, followed by a comparative study between different solar still designs. A new automatic solar still system is proposed, it consists of using a low-cost microcontroller with the Internet of Things for real-time monitoring of the solar still parameters (such as temperatures, relative humidity, and daily production of distilled water).