Numerical Simulation of salt-gradient Solar Pond Using Solar Radiation Intensity Function with Wall Shading Effect

This paper introduces solar radiation estimation function based on air mass and the statistics information about sunny and cloudy days for use in numerical modeling of solar ponds. Solar ponds are one of the methods of absorbing solar radiation and storage it with long storage periods. By using one-dimensional simulation, the performance of salt gradient solar pond is investigated. By removing the usual assumptions, it is attempted to take into account the effects of environmental conditions more realistically. These conditions included the variability of ambient temperature by day and hour, the solubility of salt depend on temperature and concentration, the variability of radiation intensity with respect to the angle of elevation of the sun, and the effect of wall shading on the pond. The analysis is transient and the day and night conditions are included. The innovation was to estimate the intensity of solar radiation using the concept of air mass and the amount of cloudy sky. A relation for the calculation of cloud cover factor, which was extracted using the statistics of cloudy and semi-cloudy days and was compared with empirically amount. The ability of this relationship is to estimate the radiation intensity for locations where statistics or tools and equipment for recording radiation intensity are missing. Presented results show that the radiation intensity is in good agreement with the existing experimental data.