Solar Still Upgrades and Results

October 9, 2013

I built a scaled down basin type solar still recently to create drinking water from surface or sea water. I’ve now solved some problems that I had with it. Here’s what I changed and some results.
From my performance sampling of this solar still, I’ve determined that I would need 44.4 sq feet of glass to provide 1 person with 1.5 gallons of potable water per day under heavy cloud cover conditions. That equates to 2.6 solar stills that are each made from a single pane of glass salvaged from a discarded sliding glass patio door. (33″ x 75″) Because some days have fewer hours of sunlight, 3 solar stills of this size per person would be a more conservative estimation. Fortunately heavy cloud cover conditions usually bring rain. It takes 30 minutes of medium rainfall for my rain barrels (90 gallons total) to fill from a completely empty condition.

Video courtesy of CrypticCRICKET

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