Structural optimization to reduce the environmental crosswind negative influence on the performance of a solar chimney power plant system

Abstract

The solar chimney power plant system (SCPPS) is a clean and pollution-free facility for generating electric power. To further improve the heat collection efficiency of SCPPS, reduce the influence of external unsteady environment crosswind, a bank of transparent baffles was proposed to be installed at the entrance of transparent cover in SCPPS. Combined with the discrete ordinates (DO) radiation model and solar load model in Fluent, the latitude and longitude of Hohhot and actual weather parameters were taken as boundary conditions. Numerical simulation of SCPPS model with external air domain and different number of baffles were carried out. The accuracy of numerical simulation was verified by experimental results. There are three different types of models discussed here: the SCPPS with no baffle, the SCPPS with one baffle, the SCPPS with two baffles. Under the condition of different baffle number, the distribution of temperature, velocity, pressure, turbulence and heat collecting efficiency were given to determine the optimal baffle number. The results show that the average temperature of chimney inlet with one baffle and two baffles are 0.92% and 3.92% higher than that with no baffle, respectively; the average velocity of chimney inlet with one baffle and two baffles are 11.83% and 18.70% higher than that with no baffle, respectively; the average collector efficiency of one baffle and two baffles are 28.45% and 58.52% higher than that of without baffle, respectively. Compared with without baffle and one baffle, adding two baffles can more effectively reduce the heat loss of SCPPS in Hohhot under different environmental crosswind speeds, and alleviate the negative effects of environmental crosswind.