A novel staggered split absorber design for enhanced solar chimney performance

Abstract

Solar chimney enables passive ventilation in green buildings, without drawing electricity from the grid. The factors influencing the performance of this sustainable passive ventilation device have been widely studied. However, more work needs to be done to increase the induced flow rate, which is crucial to enhance the attractiveness of this ventilation method. This study highlights the importance of high uniformity of outlet velocity distribution which can be achieved through distributed heating of the air in a solar chimney, leading to the staggered split absorber design proposed in this study. The flow rate induced by this novel solar chimney design is predicted numerically using an experimentally validated model and compared against the conventional solar chimney design. This novel absorber configuration results in higher flow uniformity at the chimney outlet and increases the ventilation rate by 57.0%, from 0.194 kg/s to 0.304 kg/s, for a solar chimney of 2.8 m in height, 1 m in width and 0.84 m in depth under 600 W/m2 solar irradiance.