![]() However, this newly heated water cannot rise and thus heat loss upwards is prevented. When sunlight is incident on these ponds, most of the incoming sunlight reaches the bottom and thus the "storage zone" heats up. These ponds must be clear for them to operate properly, as sunlight cannot penetrate to the bottom of the pond if the water is murky. The overall pond is several meters deep, with the "storage zone" being one or two meters thick. This collection of salty water at the bottom of the lake is known as the "storage zone", while the freshwater top layer is known as the "surface zone". This gradient results in water that is heavily salinated collecting at the bottom of the pond, with concentration decreasing towards the surface resulting in cool, fresh water on top of the pond. ![]() The key characteristic of solar ponds that allow them to function effectively as a solar energy collector is a salt-concentration gradient of the water. These ponds can be natural or man-made, but generally speaking the solar ponds that are in operation today are artificial. ![]() ![]() This type of solar energy collector uses a large, salty lake as a kind of a flat plate collector that absorbs and stores energy from the Sun in the warm, lower layers of the pond. A solar pond is a solar energy collector, generally fairly large in size, that looks like a pond.
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