Paper Title
Experimental and Numerical Study on Temperature Distributions of a Salt Gradient Solar Pond
Abstract
The aim of this research is to perform the experimental setup on a salt gradient solar pond (SGSP) to be used for
desalination. The objectives are to provide experimental data on the performance of a SGSP and to investigate the
temperature distribution in a SGSP by using ANSYS-CFX software for the CFD numerical simulation. An experimental
study is performed on a SGSP made of cylindrical shape polyethylene tank of 1000 L volume, 1.04 m diameter, 1.29 m
height and 10 mm thick.The bottom and side walls of the pond are plated with the iron sheets. The tank’s wall is insulated
with polystyrene foam of 14 cm thickness. The bottom of SGSP is supported by an iron stand insulated with polystyrene
foam sheets of 30 cm thickness to prevent heat loss to the ground. The inner surface is painted with matt-black and covered
with black plastic to increase the absorption of incident solar radiation.Pure sodium chloride salt (NaCl ≥ 98.5 %) is used to
make the salt gradient. During a period of two months of experimentation, the maximum storage temperature is reached to
32.2ºC at 5 pm during daytimes and 32.4ºC at 10 pm during night time. According to the numerical result, the maximum
storage temperature is reached to 36.2ºC. The numerical temperature distributions also show a good agreement with
experimental results.
Keywords: heat storage, numerical simulation, performance analysis, salt-gradient solar pond, temperature distribution