An enhanced heat collector design and numerical simulation for solar chimney power plant

Abstract

The solar chimney power plant (SCPP) is a promising renewable energy technology to address energy security and CO2 mitigation problems. To improve efficiency of energy conversion from solar radiation to electricity, this article changes conventional horizontal heat collector and proposes a partial inclined and convergent collector for SCPP. Utilizing k - ϵ turbulence model and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method, this article implemented a series of numerical simulations to explore the thermodynamic characteristics of airflow in SCPP and power generation efficiency in a way of changing value of design parameters, such as collector convergent angle, slope length and collector radius. The results reveal that, increasing these parameters will decrease airflow pressure, increase airflow velocity and temperature around the chimney base, hence will improve power generation efficiency. Comparing the enhanced convergent collector with conventional horizontal one, the former can improve SCPP performance and energy transformation efficiency.