Abstract
A solar still can make distilled water, not only while daytime, also after sunset due to remaining solar heat (designated as production inertia). In order to better understand the production inertia, we measured the production, evaporation and temperatures in a Tubular Solar Still (TSS) by turning infrared lamps on and off under three different radiant intensity, Rs, and two different water depths in a trough, Hw (amount of supplied water). The amount of production due to the production inertia, Mpi, after six hours of infrared heating, was about from three to four times greater for Hw= 0.04m than for Hw= 0.01m, regardless of Rs. This result may be caused by the fact, evaporation from the water surface during the production inertia was relatively greater for Hw= 0.04m because the water temperature fell more slowly for Hw= 0.04m than for Hw= 0.01m. Furthermore, the ratio of Mpi to the total production over the experiment became large with the decrease in Rs. It could be seen that the effect of the production inertia on the daily production of the TSS cannot be disregarded.
