Experimental study of geometrical and climate effects on the performance of a small solar chimney

Mehran Ghalamchi, Alibakhsh Kasaeian and Mehrdad Ghalamchi

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2015, vol. 43, issue C, 425-431

Abstract: Nowadays, referring to the increasing rate of environmental pollution and limitation on fossil fuel resources, the use of sustainable energies seems to be inevitable and an absolute necessity for the world. Renewable energies are known as the best alternative for solving the energy shortage and CO2 emission problems. Among the renewable sources, solar energy plays a significant role in aspects of accessibility of resource and diversity of energy conversion means. Solar chimney is a power plant that uses solar radiation to produce electricity by the created wind at the entrance of chimney. A solar chimney pilot power plant with 3m collector diameter and 2m chimney height was designed and constructed in University of Tehran, Iran. The temperature distributions and air velocity were measured and evaluated. The temperature difference between the chimney inlet and ambient reached to 26.3°C. The output data for different collector inlet heights were obtained and the report shows that reducing the inlet size has a positive effect on the solar chimney power production performance. The air inversion at the latter of the chimney was not observed and it was found that this phenomenon directly associated with the geometry. The maximum air velocity of 1.3m/s was recorded inside the chimney, while the collector entrance velocity was around zero.

Keywords: Solar chimney; Solar energy; Renewable energy; Collector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032114010077
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:rensus:v:43:y:2015:i:c:p:425-431

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2014.11.068

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

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