Patent ID: 8465628

Claim:
A solar energy water distillation apparatus floating on a body of seawater, comprising: a buoyant peripheral seawall; an array of buoyant structures mutually joined within said buoyant peripheral seawall to form an atmospheric barrier, the buoyant structures including a distributed array of distillation modules for producing and collecting distilled water for on-shore usage, each such distillation module including a buoyant base, a domed solar collector mounted on said buoyant base, a submerged energy absorber layer affixed to said buoyant base to define a chamber, a shallow volume of solar-heated seawater confined in said chamber, a network of chilled heat exchanger conduits disposed in said chamber on which water vapor in the air above the confined water condenses, and a set of troughs for collecting the condensate for removal and delivery to a condensate storage vessel; and at least one buoyant mistifier unit in each distillation module for enhancing an evaporative surface area of the water vapor therein and increasing condensate formation on said chilled heat exchanger conduits, where said mistifier unit floats on said shallow volume of solar-heated seawater, and said mistifier unit includes a spinning disk and seawater delivery means for directing a stream of the solar-heated seawater onto said spinning disk, where said spinning disk of said mistifier unit is disposed above and substantially parallel to an upper surface of said solar-heated seawater and said seawater delivery means includes a nozzle disposed above said spinning disk through which said stream of said solar-heated seawater is directed onto said spinning disk.