Charlie Morgan wrote:
Hi Charlie,

With 1Kw per square meter of solar power available
on a sunny day it would sure seem like you could
distill more than 1 gallon per day. I'll bet if
Larry feeds his electric still 1KW for 8 hours he
gets more than a gallon out of it. What's up??

Don W.


Where are you getting that figure, and what are you measuing? I'm
talking about a solar still. Sun heating water. No electricity
involved.

CWM

Charlie,

Re-read what I wrote above again. I'm not
referring to electricity--but to the heat power
available from the sunlight. In engineering
school, we measured the power in one square meter
of bright sunlight, and it averaged 1Kw per square
meter in Kansas. It is probably higher than that
closer to the equator.

You mentioned a panel that was 8 square feet that
produced 1 gallon of water per day. 8 square feet
is fairly close to 1 square meter (actually, to be
precise, a square meter is 10.76 square feet, but
close enough).

I had a hard time understanding how a panel with
nearly 8 KWH of energy input could only make one
gallon of distilled water. It must be terribly
inefficient.

And yes, we _both_ are talking about a solar still
with the sunlight heating water--no electricity
involved.

Don W.