Present work shows the flow effect of water mass per unit time (MFR) on the life cycle conversion efficiency (LCCE) of a single slope solar desalination unit (SSSDU) coupled with N identical evacuated tubular collectors (N-ETC). The analysis is observed for a typical days of May and December for the atmospheric situation of New Delhi with the help of analytical program fed in MATLAB. The input data required for the numerical computations have been taken from IMD, Pune, India. The average value of annual energy output has been computed based on the enegy outputs of summer and winter seasons followed by the evaluation of LCCE for the system. It has been concluded that the value of LCCE diminishes with the raise in the value of fluid flow mass/ unit time and values of LCCE becomes almost constant beyond 0.044 kg/s at given values of water depth and number of collectors. It has also been observed that the value of LCCE has similar trends at other number of collectors. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd.