CFD Analysis of a Small-Scale Solar Chimney Exposed to Ambient Crosswind

Cristiana Brasil Maia () and Janaína de Oliveira Castro Silva
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Cristiana Brasil Maia: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte 30535-901, Brazil
Janaína de Oliveira Castro Silva: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte 30535-901, Brazil

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 22, 1-18

Abstract: Solar chimneys are devices that use solar energy to generate a hot airflow that can be used for power production, the drying of agricultural products, and/or water desalination. The performance of a small-scale solar chimney is studied numerically. The computational domain includes the solar chimney, the ground, and the atmosphere. The turbulent airflow is simulated using the commercial CFD code Ansys Fluent. The only boundary conditions required for the simulation are the wind speed, the ambient temperature, and the absorbed energy from the ground, determined by an energy balance in the system. The system was simulated for one day in the summer in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The ambient crosswind plays an important role in the velocity and temperature. The velocity inside the solar chimney increased with the wind speed, increasing the heat transfer and decreasing the airflow temperature. When the wind speed increased from 0 to 10 m/s, the outlet velocity increased from 1 to 4 m/s, and the outlet temperature decreased from 313 to 304 K.

Keywords: solar chimney; small-scale solar chimney; CFD; energy balance; ambient crosswind (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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