Solar stills are cost-competitive compared to other renewable desalination technologies especially for very
small-scale desalination devices. The commercialization of advanced solar stills, which can largely increase
productivity, may require simpler design to increase their reliability and maintainability. In this paper, we have
designed a multiple-effect diffusion (MED) hybrid solar still with simpler seawater feeding device and dual
heat sources of solar thermal energy and waste heat. Performance tests with waste heat were performed with
three operational parameters: the amount of heat inputted into the hybrid still, the seawater flow rate to the
wick, and the seawater level in the basin. Experimental results show that the productivity of the hybrid still increases
linearly with increasing heat input, recording 18.02 kg/m2 at 22.37 MJ/d. The maximum productivity of
distillate was obtained at the lowest seawater level even in the case of the experiment with waste heat source.
Themaximumperformance of theMED solar still is achieved at the operation condition obtainingmaximumproductivity
at the second effect plate, indicating that theMED section of the hybrid solar still plays amore important
role than the basin section in the entire performance of the hybrid still.