Muthanna Journal of Engineering and Technology
MJET
Volume 1 issue 1, 2015
THE EFFECT OF ENTRANCE REGION GEOMETRY ON SOLAR CHIMNEY POWER PLANT PERFORMANCE
Arkan Kh. Al-Taie a, Ali Hayder Mutibb
a Machines and Equipment Engineering Department, University of Technology/Baghdad.
b Machines and Equipment Engineering Department, University of Technology/Baghdad.
Abstract
A numerical simulation to investigate the performance of solar chimney power plant is presented. A small scale model of solar chimney power plant was modelled by using FLUENT software. The solar chimney power plants consist of three essential elements, glass roof collector, chimney (tower) and wind turbine. The output power of the system depends on the input velocity to wind turbine. The turbine inlet velocity is a function of collector – chimney junction type. To solve the governing equations of conservation of mass, momentum, energy, Do- intensity, k and equations the finite volume method was adopted by FLUENT software to model and analyze such system. The results showed that the geometry of entrance region (collector-chimney junction type) has an effect on the performance parameters especially air flow velocity. Using curved or rounded junction with deflector will improve system mass flow rate by 37.65% as compared with straight junction.
Keywords: Solar chimney, Numerical simulation, Junction type, Performance parameters.