Investigation of Airflow Patterns in a New Design of Wind Tower with a Wetted Surface

Madjid Soltani, Alireza Dehghani-Sanij, Ahmad Sayadnia, Farshad M. Kashkooli, Kobra Gharali, SeyedBijan Mahbaz and Maurice B. Dusseault
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Madjid Soltani: Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada
Alireza Dehghani-Sanij: Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada
SeyedBijan Mahbaz: Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada
Maurice B. Dusseault: Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 5, 1-23

Abstract: Passive cooling systems, such as wind towers, can help to reduce energy consumption in buildings and at the same time reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Wind towers can naturally ventilate buildings and also can create enhanced thermal comfort for occupants during the warm months. This study proposes a modern wind tower design with a moistened pad. The new design includes a fixed column, a rotating and movable head, an air opening with a screen, and two windows at the end of the column. The wind tower can be installed on roof-tops to take advantage of ambient airflow. The wind tower’s head can be controlled manually or automatically to capture optimum wind velocity based on desired thermal condition. To maximize its performance, a small pump was considered to circulate and spray water on an evaporative cooling pad. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of airflow around and inside the proposed wind tower is conducted to analyze the ventilation performance of this new design of wind tower. Thereby, the velocity, total pressure, and pressure coefficient distributions around and within the wind tower for different wind velocities are examined. The simulation results illustrate that the new wind tower design with a moistened pad can be a reasonable solution to improve naturally the thermal comfort of buildings in hot and dry climates.

Keywords: energy; wind tower; greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; natural ventilation; passive cooling systems; computational fluid dynamics (CFD) (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 (13)

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