Application of Wind as a Renewable Energy Source for Passive Cooling through Windcatchers Integrated with Wing Walls

Payam Nejat, Fatemeh Jomehzadeh, Hasanen Mohammed Hussen, John Kaiser Calautit and Muhd Zaimi Abd Majid
Additional contact information
Payam Nejat: Advanced Building and Environment Research (ABER) Group, Johor Bahru 81300, Malaysia
Fatemeh Jomehzadeh: School of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor Bahru 81300, Malaysia
Hasanen Mohammed Hussen: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Technology (UOT), Baghdad 35023, Iraq
John Kaiser Calautit: Mark Group Research House, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK
Muhd Zaimi Abd Majid: School of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor Bahru 81300, Malaysia

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 10, 1-23

Abstract: Generally, two-third of a building’s energy is consumed by heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems. One green alternative for conventional air conditioner systems is the implementation of passive cooling. Wing walls and windcatchers are two prominent passive cooling techniques which use wind as a renewable resource for cooling. However, in low wind speed regions and climates, the utilization of natural ventilation systems is accompanied by serious uncertainties. The performance of ventilation systems can be potentially enhanced by integrating windcatchers with wing walls. Since previous studies have not considered this integration, in the first part of this research the effect of this integration on the ventilation performance was assessed and the optimum angle was revealed. However, there is still gap of this combination; thus, in the second part, the impact of wing wall length on the indoor air quality factors was evaluated. This research implemented a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method to address the gap. The CFD simulation was successfully validated with experimental data from wind tunnel tests related to the previous part. Ten different lengths from 10 cm to 100 cm were analyzed and it was found that the increase in wing wall length leads to a gradual reduction in ventilation performance. Hence, the length does not have a considerable influence on the indoor air quality factors. However, the best performance was seen in 10 cm, that could provide 0.8 m/s for supply air velocity, 790 L/s for air flow rate, 39.5 1/h for air change rate, 107 s for mean age of air and 92% for air change effectiveness.

Keywords: wind; passive cooling; windcatcher; badgir; natural ventilation; wing wall (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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