Comparative Thermal Analysis of Conventional and Square-Corrugated Basin Solar Stills in Basra

Document Type : Research Article

Authors
Esraa Hassanain Yousif 1
Adnan Abdullah Ateeq 2
Tahseen Ali Jabbar 3
1 Thermal Mechanical Engineering Department, Engineering Technical College, Southern Technical University, Basra, Iraq.
2 Chemical and Petrochemical Engineering Department, Engineering Technical College, Southern Technical University, Basra, Iraq
3 Thermal Mechanical Engineering Department, Engineering Technical College, Southern Technical University, Basra, Iraq
10.22059/jser.2026.414590.1741
Abstract
Solar stills represent a promising technology for decentralized freshwater production in arid and semi-arid regions. Nevertheless, their large-scale utilization remains limited by their relatively low distillate productivity and thermal efficiency. To address this limitation, the present study numerically investigates the influence of basin geometry on the thermal performance and productivity of a single-slope solar still. The analysis compares a conventional flat basin with a square-corrugated basin under identical operating conditions in Basra, Iraq, on 28 October 2025. A transient two-dimensional CFD model was developed in ANSYS Fluent, and the predicted basin water and glass cover temperatures were coupled with Dunkle correlations to estimate the hourly and daily distillate yield. The square-corrugated basin showed a clear improvement over the flat basin, with peak hourly productivity increasing from 0.72 to 0.89 kg/m²·h and cumulative daily yield increasing from 2.97 to 3.9 kg/m²·day. The average daily thermal efficiency also improved from 44.7% to 67.3%. Overall, this geometric modification achieved a 31.12% improvement in freshwater production. These results indicate that increasing the effective heat-transfer area by modifying the basin geometry improved the thermal behavior of the solar still and significantly enhanced its productivity under identical climatic conditions.
Keywords
Solar still
Basin geometry
Square-corrugated basin
Thermal performance
Freshwater productivity
CFD
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Journal of Solar Energy Research
Volume 11, Issue 3
Summer 2026
Pages 3982-3995