Thermal performance of solar assisted heat pump system with underground energy storage tank for swimming pool heating

In this study, utilizing a renewable energy system was proposed to eliminate conventional sources used for swimming pool heating applications. The proposed configuration mainly consisted of solar collectors, a buried energy storage tank, a ground source heat pump and a private swimming pool with and without a natural gas-fired boiler. Special computation techniques were used to provide the solution of transient heat transfer around the storage tank. Two analytical models were developed by using MATLAB software in order to predict the temperature of storage media and the most suitable heating system parameters offering a reasonable heating performance year round as well as to evaluate different performance parameters of the system up to ten years of heating process. In response to such objectives, the typical meteorological data of Gaziantep city was embedded into the developed computer program. The results of the heating system without boiler showed that when the area of the pool was simulated at 50 m2, the underground storage tank volume equated to 300 m3, while the collector area became 100 m2, and the periodic operation was equal to 6 years. On the other side, the incorporation of boiler has allowed to reduce the area of solar collector and volume of TES tank by about 40% and 33%, respectively. The study also predicted the periodic operation performance of proposed systems. The economic analysis showed that the cumulative solar savings of heating system without boiler higher than that of with boiler.