Abstract:
A solar still adapted to float on a body of water has a toroidal evaporating chamber with sunlight admitting and absorbing, respectively, top and bottom walls for vaporizing water from the body admitted to overlie the bottom wall. A surrounding inner float ring and underlying toroidal inflatable float support the chamber. A condenser depends from and communicates with the evaporating chamber through elongate coaxial vapor outlet and air return tubes, and in turn supplies distillate to a pendent holding tank. A rotatable shaft extending coaxially down through the evaporating chamber carries a fan to propel vapor from the evaporating chamber into the condenser due to rotation of a windmill atop the chamber. A curved reflector is rotatably driven atop the inner ring to direct additional sunlight on the evaporating chamber as the sun moves overhead. An outer float ring loosely coaxially surrounds the inner float ring.