Experimental study of vertical air temperature distribution and ventilation with energy saving using solar chimney

Abstract

Demands for residential and commercial buildings are increasing with a rapidly growing population. As a result, the buildings will expand vertically and need proper ventilation and temperature distribution inside. In conventional architecture, natural ventilation is not sufficient to meet the needs of ventilation and space conditioning, so fans and air conditioners are necessary. These devices consume 40%-60% of total energy. This can reduce with the help of a solar chimney. In most studies on solar chimneys, the emphasis has been on improving the ventilation performance in ideal conditions, whereas experimental studies have been mainly confined to small equipment. Present work carried out experimental studies on a ventilation system with full scale solar chimneys to determine the ventilation performance in an actual building space in Bhopal, India. A test space connected to a rooftop solar chimney is used for research work. It is possible to tilt the chimney from a horizontal to a vertical position at any angle. In this research work, for effective utilizing the solar radiation, the solar chimney was kept at an angle of 30° with the sun facing. Temperature distribution and air ventilation have been compared in a test space with and without solar chimney. The results show that the distribution is better and improvement in ventilation is up to 20 % with the use of solar chimney in the summer season. It was also noticed from the results of the test space that electric energy of 1kWh can be saved per day using a solar chimney.