Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, cilt.228, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
This review article addresses the need for a structured and integrative assessment of experimental and theoretical research on solar ponds (SPs), emphasizing their energy and exergy performance, economic feasibility, environmental implications, and potential contributions to green hydrogen and electricity generation. A comprehensive and structured literature review was conducted, explicitly examining the scope, methodologies, and application domains, covering more than twenty-five years of published studies, including experimental investigations, simulation-based modeling approaches, and techno-economic assessments. The review reveals that while numerous studies have examined the thermal behavior of SPs, most have primarily focused on energy efficiency, often overlooking exergy efficiency, which represents a key limitation that this review aims to highlight, as an essential indicator for understanding irreversibility sources and the actual usability of stored energy. By comparing reported efficiencies, costs, and carbon reduction metrics across various case studies, this review performs a comparative synthesis that identifies prevailing trends, limitations, and inconsistencies within the existing body of research. Furthermore, it highlights critical research gaps, such as the scarcity of large-scale demonstrations, limited economic comparisons with alternative thermal storage technologies, and the still emerging but increasingly important integration of SPs with hydrogen production systems. Accordingly, this review identifies emerging research directions related to hybrid and non-hybrid solar pond configurations (e.g., SP, SP–PEM and SP–ORC) in the context of hydrogen and electricity generation. Overall, this review provides a quantitative, integrative, and forward-looking synthesis, offering clear research directions for future SP-based thermal energy, electricity, and hydrogen generation studies and strengthening the relevance of solar pond technologies within the broader hydrogen energy research community.