Effect of cooling the glass cover of an inclined solar water distillation system under the climatic condition of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The decrease of condensed water due to the high temperature of the glass cover is a major setback of an inclined solar water distillation system under the climatic condition of Riyadh, with a summer ambient temperature of more than 45 degrees C at peak time. The small distance between the absorber plate and the top cover glass affects the glass top temperature significantly. In this work, an inclined solar water distillation system was designed, fabricated and tested under the climatic condition of Riyadh to overcome this setback. Thus, this study investigated the effect of cooling the glass cover of an inclined solar water distillation system. The system was tested with three modifications: a system without glass cooling (ISWD), a system with part of the glass shaded with Silver Shade Mesh (SSM) (ISWD-SSM), and a system with intermittent water film (WF) cooling of the glass cover (ISWD-WF). Experimental results show that the use of shade (ISWD-SSM) and water film cooling (ISWD-WF) increased the yield by 10.77% and 58.98%, respectively.