The effects of geometric factors on power generation performance in solar chimney power plants

This research aims to create an admissible source for specifying the relation between the plant's output power and specified geometrical parameters unique to each simulated chimney dimension. In the current study, the solar chimney output power has been studied considering 49 solar chimneys, including different collector diameters, chimney heights, and chimney diameters. The study employs the Ansys-CFX to simulate the numerical model for the unsteady k-e turbulent flow for a vast number of geometries. The obtained results indicate that the velocity as the main factor in generating the output power has significantly improved by elevating the collector radius. The output power increased up to 50 % by elevating the collector radius and around 30 % by enhancing the chimney heights which cause an increase in airflow, temperature differentials. Moreover, increasing the chimney height has generally ascended the power plant system. Among all geometrical parameters, chimney radius had the least impact on solar chimney performance. The results indicate that the best ratio between collector radius and chimney height is 6 %-10 % to achieve the optimized output power. Our findings were verified with the available experimental setups.