Solar stills: A review of the latest developments in numerical simulations

Using solar stills in arid regions is one of the affordable solutions to provide the drinking water from brackish water sources. Improvement of the configuration of conventional solar stills to enhance the productivity has always been the concern of engineers and researchers in the field of solar energy and related branches. Time-consuming and costly processes of solar still fabrication motivate the scholars to perform mathematical and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of solar stills to estimate the productivity. This paper presents the latest numerical studies on various types of solar stills including single slope, double slope, multi-effect, tubular and so on. The review unveils that many other studies can be conducted in the future on CFD simulation of solar stills where various techniques such as utilizing nanotechnology, reflectors, storage materials, fans, and fins have been considered for the efficiency enhancement of solar desalination systems.