Study the performance of the solar ponds for Iraq marshes

الملخص EN

Salt gradient solar ponds are large area, low cost devices for collection solar energy and storing it in the water as thermal energy.

High salinity is maintained in the bottom layers of the pond and low salinity in the upper layers.

The lower layers containing uniformly distributed brine is known as the lower convective zone (LCZ) or storage zone, and the upper layer which contains varying brine concentrations, which increases with the depth, is known as the gradient zone, or non-convective zone(NCZ), whereas the upper layer is thin and called the upper convective zone (UCZ).

The incident solar radiation penetrating the pond warms the bottom layer of water.

Because of its high relative density (due to its salt content), this hot water cannot rise to the low-salinity layers, thus heat is stored at the bottom.

This stored energy can be removed by means of heat exchange system.

This solar-heated water can be used to supply industrial process heat, or to operate heat engines using low boiling point fluids which flow into turbines to generate electrical power, also in space heating, water distillation.

This work deals with Iraqi Marshes (north of Iraq) as a solar pond.

A computer model was made to simulate the dynamic behavior of the pond.

Hourly data are used for solar radiation, ambient temperature, wind speed and relative humidity which have been taken from Iraqi Meteorological Organization for Iraqi Marshes.

The governing heat balance equations of the pond are solved numerically, using the finite difference method, taking into account heat losses from the surface, side walls and bottom.

The response of the pond to solar gain and heat losses is followed for one year.

After running the computer program for different cases, the results were compared with those theoretical and experimental results available in the literature and a good agreement was achieved from this comparison.