Abstract
Although water is the second most important fluid, after air, found on the Earth, there is a vital problem in the availability of water for many organisms, and this problem faces the whole world. As a result, scientists have developed many methods of purifying the saline/brackish water to be suitable for different uses in addition to the purpose of drinking. Fortunately, solar distillation is very rewarding in terms of operating costs and costs for a liter of freshwater distillated with using clean and environmentally friendly energy. Solar distiller is one of the solar distillation systems devices, which is simple in construction, cheap, and easy to use but it has the drawback of low productivity. This article aims to provide a summary of the different ideas and works on solar stills through different variables that affect the performance of distillers. In contrast to the review papers dealing with this topic, this paper contains comprehensive and complete details and careful reviews of all the variables that affect the performance of distillers. Therefore, it is like a ladder in front of the authors until they reach the recent of what has been studied on the distillers in a simplified way to save time and effort, which will help them to come up with different ideas that were not easily studied. Thus, this paper introduces an overview on the detailed parameters affecting the performance of solar stills. These parameters are climatic, design, and operating factors. Climatic factors consist of solar radiation, ambient temperature, air speed, and dusty and cloudy weather. While the design factors include the evaporative and exposure surface areas, glazing cover material, inclination, and thickness, distiller material, and of insulating material and thickness. Whist, the operating parameters consist of the water temperature, feed water temperature, applying vacuum, temperature difference between water and glass cover, and hybrid systems. From the extensive literature, it is concluded that the climatic, design, and operating factors significantly affect the performance of the solar still. Finally, some points are proposed for further investigation.