A solar pond in Sardinia as a feasible alternative fro renewable seawater desalination

The island of Sardinia is experiencing an acute problem due to lack of water resources, thus promoting research into the field of seawater desalination, in particular joined to the use of renewable resources. In this context, the presence of vast and unused saltwork ponds in southern Sardinia has served as an incentive for the study of solar pond technology as a means to collect and store solar energy to be used as input heat for a Multi-Effect Desalination plant (MED). We have estimated that a system consisting of a couple of solar ponds, each one measuring 1000x25 m2, is capable of reaching, in the deeper layer, temperatures of about 90oC which, coupled with a MED, can produce about 1600 m3/d of water in the summer period. In this paper we propose a three-layer solar pond, tailored to the solar irradiation conditions in Sardinia, with a heat removal system based on the translation of the storage layer along the pond. An approach to the solar pond analysis based on the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes is then presented. This methodology will be used for the optimisation and the dynamic analysis of the system. Preliminary results confirm the validity of the proposed solution.

@InProceedings{LMR02,
  author       = {Leonardi, E. and Maciocco, L. and Rosa-Clot, M.},
  title        = {A solar pond in Sardinia as a feasible alternative fro renewable seawater desalination},
  booktitle    = {EuroSun International Conference},
  year         = {2002},
  keywords     = {solar pond, desalination},
  url          = {https://publications.crs4.it/pubdocs/2002/LMR02},
}