Monolithic solar stills: A new approach for manufacturing of water desalination products

A solar still is a device that uses solar radiation to produce drinkable water by distillation of salt or brackish water. The basin-type is the most common among conventional solar stills, and it is usually found with single slope or double slope condenser covers. Although there is a lot of research on its thermal performance, manufacturing technologies have not been used for mass production of the solar still proposed in this paper. Some works reported in the literature that use these methodologies are reviewed in this paper and an industrial process for obtaining a solar still with advantages over existing manufacturing technologies is proposed. Among these advantages are a monolithic lightweight still, hollow basin ready for thermal insulation injection, integral solar collector and collection trough, glass condenser or plastic film condenser, and integral distilled water tank collector. Some designs of monolithic solar stills that show these characteristics are proposed. The industrial process examined permits mass production of this kind of solar products without degrading its thermal performance.