Experimental natural-seawater validation and numerical scale-up of an inclined stepped solar distiller
4 affiliations
- 1Laboratory of Engineering and Innovation of Advanced Systems, Faculty of Science and Technologies SETTAT, Hassan 1 University, Morocco; Research Foundation for Development and Innovation in Science and Engineering, Casablanca, Morocco; Correspondence to: 6 Street, El Massira District, Khenifra Postal Code 54000, Morocco.
- 2Laboratory of Engineering and Innovation of Advanced Systems, Faculty of Science and Technologies SETTAT, Hassan 1 University, Morocco; Research Foundation for Development and Innovation in Science and Engineering, Casablanca, Morocco
- 3Research Foundation for Development and Innovation in Science and Engineering, Casablanca, Morocco
- 4Research Foundation for Development and Innovation in Science and Engineering, Casablanca, Morocco; International Academy of Scientific Francophone (IASF), Rabat, Morocco
Abstract
The practical deployment of passive solar distillers remains limited by insufficient evidence regarding their long-term operation with natural seawater and their performance at larger scales. This study combines a 53-day outdoor experimental campaign with a generalized transient thermal model to evaluate an inclined stepped solar distiller equipped with stair-step chicanes under the climatic conditions of Essaouira, Morocco. The experimental prototype operated at a nominal water depth of 5 mm, while the numerical configurations used architecture-specific depths of 5–7 mm. During the campaign, the natural-seawater temperature ranged from 17.45 to 25.61 °C, electrical conductivity from 52.0 to 76.6 mS/cm, and total dissolved solids from 25,405 to 31,000 ppm. Daily experimental freshwater productivity ranged from 1.354 to 2.153 L/m²/day, with a mean value of 1.729 L/m 2 /day and a sample standard deviation of 0.214 L/m²/day. This mean value was close to the previously reported productivity of 1.76 L/m 2 /day obtained using a synthetic sodium chloride solution. The distillate exhibited minimum apparent reductions of 98.7% in electrical conductivity, 98.8% in total dissolved solids, and 59.2% in turbidity, while no presumptive thermotolerant coliforms were detected in the analyzed 100 mL sample. The calibrated reference model predicted a specific productivity of 1.720 L/m²/day and was extended to compare five solar-thermal scale-up strategies without auxiliary heating and one photovoltaic-assisted enhancement. Under an identical passive solar collection area of 1.72 m², the predicted specific productivity ranged from 1.720 to 2.399 L/m 2 /day. The compartmented monoblock configuration achieved the highest production among the non-heated configurations of 4.127 L/day, whereas photovoltaic-assisted heating increased the common-condenser production from 3.240 to 3.524 L/day. The main novelty of this work lies in integrating long-duration natural-seawater experimental validation with a unified framework for comparing geometric enlargement, modular replication, thermal cascading, compartmentation, centralized condensation, and photovoltaic-assisted operation. The results demonstrate that hydraulic, thermal, and condensation organization is more influential than collection area alone in preserving productivity and operational stability during scale-up.
Related
- Experimental and numerical analysis of liquid sloshing within tank subjected to pitching motion
- Design and experimental validation of an optimized microalgae-bacteria consortium for the bioremediation of glyphosate in continuous photobioreactors
- Numerical Simulation and Field Validation of Airflow Field and CO Dispersion Characteristics during Tunnel Construction under Dynamic Vehicle Movement
- Experimental validation of an open-source low-cost single-camera 6-DOF tracking of floating-body motion in wave tanks
- Design and Experimental Validation of a Low-Power IoT-Based Smart Irrigation System Using LoRa, ET0, and Crop Water Stress Index for Precision Agriculture
BibTeX
@article{allaoui2026experimental,
title = {{Experimental natural-seawater validation and numerical scale-up of an inclined stepped solar distiller}},
author = {Achraf El Allaoui and Wafaa Dachry and Hassan Gziri and Loubna El Ansari and Hicham Medromi},
journal = {Cleaner Water},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1016/j.clwat.2026.100334},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clwat.2026.100334},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Experimental natural-seawater validation and numerical scale-up of an inclined stepped solar distiller
AU - Achraf El Allaoui
AU - Wafaa Dachry
AU - Hassan Gziri
AU - Loubna El Ansari
AU - Hicham Medromi
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
JO - Cleaner Water
DO - 10.1016/j.clwat.2026.100334
UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clwat.2026.100334
AB - The practical deployment of passive solar distillers remains limited by insufficient evidence regarding their long-term operation with natural seawater and their performance at larger scales. This study combines a 53-day outdoor experimental campaign with a generalized transient thermal model to evaluate an inclined stepped solar distiller equipped with stair-step chicanes under the climatic conditions of Essaouira, Morocco. The experimental prototype operated at a nominal water depth of 5 mm, while the numerical configurations used architecture-specific depths of 5–7 mm. During the campaign, the natural-seawater temperature ranged from 17.45 to 25.61 °C, electrical conductivity from 52.0 to 76.6 mS/cm, and total dissolved solids from 25,405 to 31,000 ppm. Daily experimental freshwater productivity ranged from 1.354 to 2.153 L/m²/day, with a mean value of 1.729 L/m 2 /day and a sample standard deviation of 0.214 L/m²/day. This mean value was close to the previously reported productivity of 1.76 L/m 2 /day obtained using a synthetic sodium chloride solution. The distillate exhibited minimum apparent reductions of 98.7% in electrical conductivity, 98.8% in total dissolved solids, and 59.2% in turbidity, while no presumptive thermotolerant coliforms were detected in the analyzed 100 mL sample. The calibrated reference model predicted a specific productivity of 1.720 L/m²/day and was extended to compare five solar-thermal scale-up strategies without auxiliary heating and one photovoltaic-assisted enhancement. Under an identical passive solar collection area of 1.72 m², the predicted specific productivity ranged from 1.720 to 2.399 L/m 2 /day. The compartmented monoblock configuration achieved the highest production among the non-heated configurations of 4.127 L/day, whereas photovoltaic-assisted heating increased the common-condenser production from 3.240 to 3.524 L/day. The main novelty of this work lies in integrating long-duration natural-seawater experimental validation with a unified framework for comparing geometric enlargement, modular replication, thermal cascading, compartmentation, centralized condensation, and photovoltaic-assisted operation. The results demonstrate that hydraulic, thermal, and condensation organization is more influential than collection area alone in preserving productivity and operational stability during scale-up.
SN - 2950-2632
ER -