Heating performance of swimming pool incorporated solar assisted heat pump and underground thermal energy storage tank: A case study

Abstract

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 a private swimming pool, ground source heat pump, buried energy storage tank, and solar collectors. The solution of transient heat transfer around the storage tank and energy equations for the other configurations are integrated with MATLAB software to develop an analytical model. Analytical model was used to detect the most suitable swimming pool heating system parameters offering a reasonable heating performance yearround as well as to evaluate different performance parameters of the system.The typical meteorological data of Gaziantep city was embedded into the developed computer program to find reasonable water temperatures, solar collector area, suitable tank volume, and time to arrive at periodic conditions. The results showed that when the area of the pool was simulated at 50 m 2 , the underground thermal energy storage tank volume equated to 300 m 3 , while the collector area became 100 m 2 , and the periodic operation was equal to 6 years. Finally, the results showed that the swimming pool heating system derived the majority of its total energy requirement from solar energy (being 86.18%), in addition to utilizing the heat pump (being 13.82%), during the first year of operation.

Water and Energy Sustainability of Swimming Pools: A Case Model on the Costa Brava, Catalonia

“…The studies related to filtration during recirculation and disinfection to ensure pool sanitation [70] and the studies of water stress in the filter cleaning process [29,71,72] and water recovery [73][74][75][76] are of great importance in the research presented here. Regarding energy stress, water heating is a major challenge and air conditioning and dehumidification entail significant energy expenditure [36,[77][78][79]. To improve this expenditure, efficient heating with appropriate heat pumps is essential [80,81].…”

“…Specifically, energy stress drives efficient optimization studies through the prediction of energy consumption and savings, as well as the improvement of the energy cycle of swimming pools [85][86][87][88][89][90]. Regarding the use of renewable energy, such as solar energy, for heating swimming pools, there are studies that seek to achieve an energy balance between all the alternatives [35,36,43,78,85,[91][92][93][94].…”

“…Thus, the issues of concern in the literature, at the level of water stress, are evaporation [42,[50][51][52][53][54]56,63,[65][66][67][68][69]83], filter backwashing [29,61,72,75,76], and water reuse and disinfection [71,74,76]. Regarding energy stress, the literature is based on energy consumption and cost [20,28,30,77,85,86,90], heating [31,78,79,81], simulation models and applicable technology [35,58,60,65,84,86,89], solar systems to reduce consumption [35,36,43,[91][92][93][94], and carbon footprint [12,[20]…”