The consumption of conventional energy sources like fossil fuels, fire wood and oil are rapidly depleting day by day and they are exhausting over a period of time. Therefore, the present work deals with conversion of brackish water into distilled water using one of the renewable energy resources called solar energy as heat input to the solar still. This work mainly investigates the ways to improve the productivity of water and still efficiency by using various materials as absorbents and also to minimize the total dissolved salts present in water. Materials used to improve the absorptivity of water for solar radiation are potassium permanganate (KMnO4)and charcoal and these materials are added in various proportions to the water to analyze the productivity and still efficiency of the system. Experiments are conducted on solar still for water with different absorbing materials. The impact of using these absorbing materials on heat transfer through the still, productivity and efficiency is calculated. The total dissolved salts (TDS) present in water are found by TDS equipment and also the pH value of water is measured by using pH indicator papers. Experimental results revealed that the addition of charcoal resulted in 13.27% improvement in practical efficiency and 16.67% enhancement in practical productivity compared to baseline fluid water. Further, TDS presented in the water is reduced from 650 PPM to 55.5 PPM and pH value of water is 7.2.