Active solar stills can provide enhanced distillate productivity, as saline water is circulated and put in contact with an additional heat source which supplies extra heat to the system. In this work, a single slope solar still having a transparent glass cover is considered to be heated at its bottom by a circulating heat transfer fluid. The rate of this flow and the temperature at the inlet of the still are assumed to be controlled such that they are adjusted to the desired values. A modeling based on relevant correlations giving the heat transfer coefficients and the vaporization heat flux as function of Rayleigh number was derived. This takes the form of a set of highly coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equations in terms of time-dependent temperatures of the still components. The obtained model enabled to take into account the effects of heat transfer fluid rate, inlet temperature, sea water rate, basin depth, ambient temperature, wind speed and relative humidity of ambient air. Extensive parametric studies were performed and optimization of the rate and yield of distilled water was discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.