Influence of the collector concavity on the airflow behavoir within solar chimney power plant

ABSTRACT

Solar Chimney Power Plant (SCPP) is a large-scale system which is designed to produce electricity from the solar energy. This thermal device is characterized by a high investment cost and a low thermodynamic efficiency. The optimization of these thermal systems is required. The solar collector is one of the important parts of the solar chimney power plant. The collector is considered as a heat generator by using the greenhouse effect. In this paper, a novel design of the collector is proposed in order to increase the overall efficiency of the SCPP. In fact, impact of the collector concavity on the system performance is studied. Using CFD method, two-dimensional steady simulations were performed while varying the concavity ratio of the collector (CC). The specific ratio is defined as the curvature radius of the collector roof divided by the collector radius. The airflow behavior is examined by analyzed the static temperature, the magnitude velocity, the static pressure and the overall percentage of the power output rise. The numerical simulations were validated using experimental data gathered from a small prototype build at the National School of Engineers of Sfax, Tunisia. The predicted outcomes showed that a concave collector could enhance the overall performance of the solar chimney power plant.

KEYWORDS:

• Solar chimney power plant
• solar collector
• turbulent airflow
• computational dynamic fluids

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