Investigation of performance of a solar pond integrated with solar collectors for hydrogen energy production

It is very important to investigate the most efficient way to benefit from the solar energy for our country which has a sufficient potential. In this study, an integrated system consists of a solar pond, flat plate collectors and an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC), was designed. Both thermal and electricity as well as hydrogen energy generation performances of the integrated system were determined. In addition, mass, enthalpy, entropy, energy and exergy balance equations were tried to solve by using a software which is called Engineering Equation Solver (EES). Thus, energy and exergy analysis of the system were done. As a result, output water at higher temperature can be obtained from the flat plate collectors which are supported by a solar pond. Than a significant amount of electrical energy was produced by using ORC which uses thermal energy comes from integrated system. At the same time, the performance of the hydrogen energy which is called portable energy production with the electrical energy was determine. We believe that the theoretical results obtained in this work are very useful in making realistic and accurate predictions about the pre-planned integrated systems to produce the hydrogen energy.