Comparative Energetic and Exergetic Analysis of Conventional and Sloped Solar Chimney Power Plants

Abstract

A CFD analysis using ANSYS Fluent software was conducted to study the effects of collector slope on solar chimney's performances. Three solar chimney configurations, named A, B, and C, which correspond, respectively, to an inclination angle of the collector roof of 0°, 2.5°, and 5°, were investigated. The results show that the thermodynamic performances of the solar chimney were improved by increasing the inclination angle of the collector roof. In fact, the power extracted from the sloped solar chimney power plants increases with increasing the inclination angle and the solar radiation intensity, while it achieves a maximum at 800 W/m2 for configuration A. The energetic and the exergetic analysis show that configure B has the best performance in terms of conventional, effective, and total efficiencies of the collector and in terms of exergy destruction ratios in both the collector and the transition section. Whereas, configuration C has the highest amount of power extracted and the best overall energetic efficiency.