ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Water
Sec. Water and Critical Zone
This article is part of the Research TopicWater Resources, Climate Change, and Intelligent Systems: Optimizing Hydropower, Hydrogen Production, and Irrigation SustainabilityView all articles
Performance of a single slope passive solar desalination unit – an experimental investigation
Provisionally accepted
Ganesh Radhakrishnan1Teodora Odett Breaz2Salim Sulaiman Salim Al Burtamani1Bashar Saif Hilal Al Busaidi1Said Nasser Said Al Adwani1Ali Azzan Ali Al Siyabi1Issam Ghanim Dhahi Al Ghawi1
Kadhavoor R Karthikeyan3*- 1University of Technology and Applied Sciences - Nizwa, Nizwa, Oman
- 2Universitatea 1 Decembrie 1918 din Alba Iulia, Alba Iulia, Romania
- 3National University of Science and Technology (Muscat), Muscat, Oman
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An alternate sources of energy such as solar, wind etc. had become more essential in the recent time to generate power and to ensure water and food security for the sustainable growth of a nation. In this study, a passive-type single-slope solar desalination system using solar energy for domestic applications was designed, fabricated, and tested for its performance. The experiments were conducted for ten consecutive days under the local weather conditions of Nizwa, a city in Oman. The effect of various factors such as ambient conditions, temperatures at various locations across the solar still and air movement were considered in this study. The performance of the solar still was evaluated through energy, exergy and economic analyses. The pH value of the fresh water obtained was around 6 on all the days of experiment, which was found to be reasonably good and safe for drinking. A steady rise on energy efficiency and exergy efficiency was observed till 14 h after which there was a marginal rise in energy efficiency and drop for exergy efficiency due to significant reduction in solar radiation and the ambient conditions across the still. These efficiencies of the solar still in turn influenced the fresh water productivity proportionally. The study revealed a fact that the performance of the still and quality of the fresh water recommended to be suitable for domestic applications.
Keywords: desalination, energy efficiency, Exergy Analysis, productivity, Single slope, solar still
Received: 31 Aug 2025; Accepted: 26 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Radhakrishnan, Breaz, Al Burtamani, Al Busaidi, Al Adwani, Al Siyabi, Al Ghawi and Karthikeyan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kadhavoor R Karthikeyan
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