Computational studies on the effect of geometric parameters on the performance of a solar chimney power plant

A solar chimney power plant (SCPP) is a renewable-energy power plant that transforms solar energy into electricity. The SCPP consists of three essential elements – solar air collector, chimney tower, and wind turbine(s). The present work is aimed at optimizing the geometry of the major components of the SCPP using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software ANSYS-CFX to study and improve the flow characteristics inside the SCPP. The overall chimney height and the collector diameter of the SCPP were kept constant at 10 m and 8 m respectively. The collector inlet opening was varied from 0.05 m to 0.2 m. The collector outlet diameter was also varied from 0.6 m to 1 m. These modified collectors were tested with chimneys of different divergence angles (0°–3°) and also different chimney inlet openings of 0.6 m to 1 m. The diameter of the chimney was also varied from 0.25 m to 0.3 m. Based on the CFX computational results, the best configuration was achieved using the chimney with a divergence angle of 2° and chimney diameter of 0.25 m together with the collector opening of 0.05 m and collector outlet diameter of 1 m. The temperature inside the collector is higher for the lower opening resulting in a higher flow rate and power.