A theoretical investigation of solar radiation and heat transfer in a solar pond in Karbala city

Abstract

This paper concerns the simulation study of a mathematical model of the solar pond performance for collecting and storing the incident solar energy on the Karbala city (32.616° N, 44.025°E) in a form of thermal energy in its lower layer. It was found that there are several parameters affecting the amount of stored energy. The most effective factor is the amount of incident global radiation on the pond’s location. Therefore, a program in the FORTRAN language was established in the first stage to calculate incident solar radiation and the second stage to solve the One-Dimensional Finite Difference Method for heat transfer equations by using the arrays dimension. Various data for incident global solar radiation were in high agreement with NASA’s published data for Karbala city. Additionally, the obtained data of temperatures inside the solar pond were very similar to the published physical and experimental data of solar ponds.