Investigation of the performance of solar pond with potassium chloride layer

In this study, performance of a solar pond with potassium chloride layer was investigated. For this purpose, a PVC solar pond with a diameter of 0.96 m, a depth of 1.10 m and a wall thickness of 0.05 m cylindrical shape was built. The side walls of the solar pond are insulated with 0.08 m thick glass wool and covered with galvanized steel. The solar pond is placed on an insulated wooden base with a thickness of 20 cm. The inner zones was built up by overlaying the potassium chloride saline solution. The inner zones are the upper convection zone (UCZ), the insulation zone (IZ) and the heat storage zone (HSZ). The sunlight coming into the pond is reflected, absorbed and scattered by the potassium chloride layers. The rest of the sunlight reaches the heat storage zone and is absorbed and stored in the form of heat energy, depending on the density and thickness of this zone. The storage capacity of the very dense potassium chloride solution increases as the light absorption property increases, while the heat capacity decreases with increasing temperature and density. For this reason, the thermal capacities of potassium chloride layers were calculated for different months and the heat storage performance of the pond was tried to be determined. As a result, the heat performance of the solar pond is calculated for August, September, October and November. The heat storage capacity was found the highest at 188.95 MJ in August and the lowest at 87.96 MJ in November. One of the most important reasons for this is that the potassium chloride solution adversely affects the specific heat capacity of the water and therefore the heat performance is negatively affected.