Investigating the effect of increasing the number of steps and adding thermal fin in stepped solar still

Today, the use of renewable energies has become increasingly important due to the fossil fuels being consumed which cause environmental pollution. The use of solar energy due to the abundance and availability of this energy and the ability to save and convert it into other forms of energy has been considered. In this work, a stepped solar still is simulated in two dimensions using Comsol software. Also, increasing the number of stairs and adding a number of Fins to increase the amount of fresh water produced has been studied. The simulation results were compared with the experimental data. The average error rate for fresh water produced and the temperature of saline water obtained from the software with experimental values are 11.78 and 1.75 percent, respectively. The results show that as the number of steps increases, the amount of fresh water produced increases. In addition, adding three thermal fins with a size of 0.3 cm on the stairs compared to the existing state of the device, the amount of fresh water produced increases by 9.65%.