Performance of a swimming pool heating system by utilizing waste energy rejected from an ice rink with an energy storage tank

• An analytical model of the system, and a computational program were developed.
• Transient behavior of the water in the buried energy storage tank was simulated.
• Effects of various system parameters on the system performance were investigated.
• Long period performance of the system was analyzed and obtained periodic condition.
• Optimum ice rink size is determined for a semi-Olympic size swimming pool heating.

This study deals with determining the long period performance of a swimming pool heating system by utilizing waste heat energy that is rejected from a chiller unit of ice rink and subsequently stored in an underground thermal energy storage (TES) tank. The system consists of an ice rink, a swimming pool, a spherical underground TES tank, a chiller and a heat pump. The ice rink and the swimming pool are both enclosed and located in Gaziantep, Turkey. An analytical model was developed to obtain the performance of the system using Duhamel’s superposition and similarity transformation techniques. A computational model written in MATLAB program based on the transient heat transfer is used to obtain the annual variation of the ice rink and the swimming pool energy requirements, the water temperature in the TES tank, COP, and optimum ice rink size depending on the different ground, TES tank, chiller, and heat pump characteristics. The results obtained from the analysis indicate that 6–7 years’ operational time span is necessary to obtain the annual periodic operation condition. In addition, an ice rink with a size of 475 m2 gives the optimum performance of the system with a semi-Olympic size swimming pool (625 m2).