Energetic performance analysis of solar pond with and without shading effect

Solar ponds are one of the innovative technologies in the field of utilizing solar energy and have attracted much attention as storage for the thermal energy, in recent years. In this paper, numerical and experimental studies have been conducted for investigating the energy distributions and also efficiencies in the inner zones of a square solar pond. For this purpose, a small scale solar pond with a square cross-section was built and tested in Urmia University in Urmia-Iran. The height and area of the solar pond were equal to 1.1 m and 4 m2, respectively. In the small solar ponds, the shading by the side walls affects the accumulation of solar energy and thermal energy storage. Therefore, for achieving a complete understanding of the energy performance in the small solar ponds, a shading model is also used for square solar ponds. Therefore, by using the proper relations, energy efficiencies of the inner zones with and without the shading effect were analyzed. For lower convective zone, the highest energy efficiencies for the cases with and without shading area are in July and were equal to 9.32% and 6.57%, respectively. The results confirm that applying the correct format of equations in calculating the energy efficiency of the ponds would lead to reasonable results.