Lumped modeling of solar-evaporative ponds charged from the water of the Dead Sea

Solar evaporators are widely used in salt mining from seawaters or saline waters. The potash industry in Jordan and other countries utilized solar energy in the evaporation process to concentrate seawater where salt starts to deposit. In this work, the thermal performance of such evaporators was analyzed and modeled on lumped basis. The developed model indicates that the efficiency of any solar evaporator is limited by the optical absorptivity of the saline water as an upper limit.