Numerical investigation of a novel tower solar chimney concept

Hakim Kebabsa, Mohand Said Lounici and Ahmed Daimallah

Energy, 2021, vol. 214, issue C

Abstract: Divergent tower solar chimney power plant is an attractive upgrading of the solar chimney system. However, boundary layer separation (BLS) phenomenon can appear when the divergence angle exceeds a specific value, inducing system performance degradation. The present paper proposes a novel solar chimney tower concept, named annular tower solar chimney power plant (ATSCPP), to deal with BLS phenomenon and improve the divergent tower system. Accordingly, the influence of exterior tower radius (ETR) and interior tower radius (ITR) were evaluated, using the Spanish prototype. Simulations were carried out using a 3D model. The results indicate that flow behavior, power output and thermal efficiency shows a strong sensitivity to the change of both ETR and ITR. The best case is obtained when (ETR = 17 m, ITR = 13 m). The new solar chimney tower concept allowed a significant increase in the driving potential. The total improvement in power output reaches 32%. An improved concept which allows a compromise between induced cost and performance gain of the system is also proposed.

Keywords: Solar chimney; Divergent tower; Annular tower; Natural convection; Solar energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544220321551
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:214:y:2021:i:c:s0360544220321551

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2020.119048

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().