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Numerical and Experimental Study of the Aerothermal Characteristics in Solar Chimney Power Plant with Hyperbolic Chimney Shape

  • Research Article - Mechanical Engineering
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Abstract

Solar chimney power plant (SCPP) is an attractive way to produce electricity in the high solar radiations zones. It consists of three main components: collector, chimney and turbine. The chimney is considered as the most expensive part of the SCPP. This is due to the requirement of important height to achieve suitable performance. In this paper, a new chimney design of hyperbolic shape is proposed. The design is optimized by analyzing the impact of the divergence radius of the chimney on the SCPP performance using a 2D computational fluid dynamics code. For this end, the ratio of the hyperbolic chimney radius over the chimney height was varied from 0 to 0.3. Computational results were validated against test data from a developed experimental prototype. The comparison of the proposed designs with a conventional solar chimney power plant shows a significant performance improvement. In fact, the increase in the divergence chimney radius has led to more advanced power output. Specially, a rise of 295% of the total system efficiency is found when the divergence radius is set to 15 m.

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Abbreviations

\(A_{\mathrm{c}}\) :

Collector area \(\hbox {(m}^{2})\)

\(A_{\mathrm{ch}}\) :

Area of the chimney entrance section \(\hbox {(m}^{2})\)

\(\hbox {c}_{\mathrm{p}}\) :

Specific heat capacity of the air \(\hbox {(J kg}^{-1})\)

h :

Convection heat transfer \(\hbox {(W m}^{-2} \hbox {K}^{-1})\)

\(H_{\mathrm{c}}\) :

Collector height (m)

\(H_{\mathrm{ch}}\) :

Chimney height (m)

k :

Turbulent kinetic energy \(\hbox {(m}^{2}~\hbox {s}^{-2})\)

\(\dot{{m}}\) :

Mass flow rate \(\hbox {(kg s}^{-1})\)

p :

Static pressure (Pa)

\(P_{\mathrm{po}}\) :

Potential power output (W)

Pr:

Prandtl number (Dimensionless)

r :

Radial coordinate (m)

R :

Radius of the hyperbolic divergence (m)

\(R_{\mathrm{c}}\) :

Collector radius (m)

\(R_{\mathrm{ch}}\) :

Radius of the Chimney section (m)

\(R_{\mathrm{H}}\) :

Ratio of the radius and height of the hyperbolic chimney (Dimensionless)

t :

Time (h)

T :

Temperature (K)

\(T_{0}\) :

Ambient temperature (K)

\(T_{\mathrm{sky}}\) :

Sky temperature (K)

u :

Radial velocity \(\hbox {(m~s}^{-1})\)

V :

Air velocity \(\hbox {(m~s}^{-1})\)

\(v_{\mathrm{ch}}\) :

Air velocity at the chimney entrance \(\hbox {(m~s}^{-1})\)

\(v_{\mathrm{out}}\) :

Air velocity at the chimney exit \(\hbox {(m~s}^{-1})\)

w :

Axial velocity \(\hbox {(m~s}^{-1})\)

z :

Axial coordinate (m)

\(\beta \) :

Thermal expansion coefficient \(\hbox {(K}^{-1})\)

\(\Delta T\) :

Temperature rise in the collector (K)

\(\Delta p\) :

Pressure drop in the chimney (Pa)

\(\varepsilon \) :

Dissipation rate of turbulent kinetic energy \(\hbox {(m}^{2}~\hbox {s}^{-3})\)

\(\lambda \) :

Thermal conductivity of the air \(\hbox {(W~m}^{-1} \hbox {K}^{-1})\)

\(\mu \) :

Dynamic viscosity \(\hbox {(Pa~s}^{-1})\)

\(\mu _{\mathrm{t}} \) :

Turbulent viscosity \(\hbox {(Pa s}^{-1})\)

\(\rho \) :

Density of the air \(\hbox {(kg~m}^{-3})\)

\({\rho }_0 \) :

Reference density \(\hbox {(kg~m}^{-3})\)

\({\rho }_{{\mathrm{ch}}} \) :

Density at the chimney entrance \(\hbox {(kg~m}^{-3})\)

\({\eta }_{\mathrm{c}} \) :

Collector efficiency (Dimensionless)

\({\eta }_{{\mathrm{ch}}} \) :

Chimney efficiency (Dimensionless)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Electro-Mechanic Systems (LASEM), National School of Engineers of Sfax (ENIS), km 3.5 Soukra, B.P. 1173, 3038, Sfax, Tunisia

    Haythem Nasraoui, Zied Driss, Ahmad Ayedi & Hedi Kchaou

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  1. Haythem Nasraoui
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  2. Zied Driss
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  3. Ahmad Ayedi
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  4. Hedi Kchaou
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Correspondence to Haythem Nasraoui.

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Nasraoui, H., Driss, Z., Ayedi, A. et al. Numerical and Experimental Study of the Aerothermal Characteristics in Solar Chimney Power Plant with Hyperbolic Chimney Shape. Arab J Sci Eng 44, 7491–7504 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-019-03821-x

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