Numerical and experimental study on the collector and chimney modifications of a solar chimney power plant

Abstract

The environmental hazard posed by global warming necessitates the development of sustainable, eco-friendly power production unit based on renewable energy principles. Solar Chimney Power Plants (SCPP) are the resource that fits this description. Here, the chimney is equipped with a larger roof at bottom, referred as collector, absorbs the sunlight to warm the air inside. This heat creates an upward draft, resulting a forward motion of air, which rotates the turbine. There is a better possibility of enhancing the performance of an SCPP with modification of factors such as chimney height, collector area, collector angular position. Hence, this research objective is to study the alteration in efficiency of an SCPP with collector angular modifications, such as completely slopped, intermediately sloped profiles, as well as the effects of various chimney designs with area ratios larger than one. An additional study of a semi divergent (SD) chimney with a completely slanted collector, positioned vertically. Initial analysis is performed using ANSYS-FLUENT, and a simulation environment is modeled to mimic the various chimney and collector configurations in preparation for the experimental work. The better model is chosen from these simulations and experimented in true environmental conditions. It was determined that the average increase in temperature within the SCPP was 17 K. The research found that the collector setup with a slope of 50% (case-2) resulted in a peak velocity 12% higher than that of the fully sloped configuration (case-1). Additionally, case-2 was 23% more productive than the Manzanares facility. On the other hand, case-3’s semi divergent chimney with a complete slopped collector outperformed the other two by 23% and 12%, respectively.

Keywords

• C-D Chimney
• Generation Renewable Energy
• Green Technology
• Solar Chimney
• Solar Power

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