Experimental investigation on a pyramid solar still under Iraq climate conditions

Present, many communities in the world, especially the Middle East region, suffer from a shortage of fresh water for drinking or for engineering and industrial applications. The current research is an attempt to contribute to the provision of fresh water through the exploitation of solar energy. A pyramid-shaped solar water purifier is employed with a basin bottom area of 1 m2 and 30° tilt glass cover under the climatic conditions of Anbar city, Iraq. From the experiments, salty water temperature, glass cover temperature, and ambient temperature are varied during the test time (24 hours) and reached the peak at midday. The distillate water productivity is seen to be influenced by the basin water temperature, since it increases dramatically as the basin water temperature rises. Additionally, the results show that water production dramatically decreased with the increase in water depth from 2 cm to 10 cm by approximately 60% in the solar still. Where, evaporation rates often rise with a reduction in basin water depth due to the combined impacts of latent heat and buoyancy-driven flow on the water desalination process. Types of basin bottom plates (unpainted flat plate, black flat plate, and black corrugated plate) have a remarkable influence on the cumulative rate of pure water production.