Effect of chimney height and collector roof angle on flow parameters of solar updraft tower (SUT) plant

Abstract

Solar updraft tower (SUT) is a viable option to produce electrical energy from solar energy. Extensive studies needed to estimate the flow parameters and analyse this set-up. A 3D numerical model is developed to analyse the flow parameters such as pressure, temperature and velocity of SUT plant. Effect of geometrical parameters such as chimney height and collector roof angle is studied numerically in this work. The diameter of absorber plate and chimney as 3.5 m and 0.6 m and the collector roof angle, chimney height and inlet gap as 30o, 6 m and 0.1 m, respectively, are selected for numerical simulation. A parametric study is performed for varying chimney heights from 3 to 8 m and collector roof angle 20o–35o with an increment of 5o each case. The airflow inside the SUT is turbulent, renormalization group (RNG) k-e model is selected, and (discrete ordinates) DO model is incorporated for evaluation of radiation effect inside the domain. From the simulation results, it is concluded that when collector roof angle is increased, air velocity is increased and also air temperature is slightly dropped. It is found that there is 31% velocity enhancement when the chimney height is increased from 3 to 8 m.