Double Diffusive Natural Convection in Solar Ponds With Nonlinear Temperature and Salinity Profiles

A solar pond can be used as a thermal energy source provided that convective instabilities do not occur. This paper experimentally examines the stability of a fluid layer with nonlinear salinity and temperature profiles. A nonlinear salt profile was set up in a fluid layer, and the water was heated by a solar radiation simulator. Three stability experiments were conducted. Instabilities occurred at the location of the weakest salinity gradient, and were confined to a thin region, as predicted by theory. A local length scale was used to produce a stability parameter, the ratio of thermal to solute Rayleigh numbers. It is shown that for nonconstant solute and temperature gradients, the appropriate length scale is based on the radius of curvature of the salinity distribution. With this chocie of a length scale, good agreement was found between theory and experiment for the onset of an instability.