The work evaluates experimentally technique to
improve fresh water production by careful energy recovery in
the vapour condensation processes; the recovered heat in turn
on drives additional evaporation and preheats the feedwater. A
pilot plant is designed and constructed in an arid area with 2 m2
solar evaporation collector area to evaluate the process. This
unit is tested on cold and hot days. The effect of main
parameters on fresh water production of the unit is studied. The
experimental results show that, the production rate and
efficiency of the system are strongly affected by solar radiation
and level water in solar evaporation collector. Within the studied
ranges, the maximum productivity reached to 16.1 kg/ m2day at
Tvap,av = 87.6 oC , solar radiation 842 W/m2 and level water 1.912
kg. According to these results, fresher water production of the
present system is higher than that solar still desalination system
in the previous studies.