Annual Evaluation of Natural Ventilation Induction in Solar Chimneys under Tropical, Dry, and Temperate Climates of Mexico: A Case Study

Abstract

This article presents an annual performance evaluation of single- and double-air-channel solar chimneys for natural ventilation induction under weather conditions in Mexico. The global energy balance method modeled both types of solar chimneys in an unsteady state. The case study evaluated five cities in Mexico. Experimental data of a single-air-channel chimney prototype evaluated under controlled conditions were used to validate the GEB numerical solution. Model validation considers climatic parameters to increase the accuracy of ventilation calculations, e.g., solar radiation, ambient temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, and atmospheric pressure. Experimental evaluation was performed considering the warmest and coldest days in each month of 2018. The modeling time to achieve the initial condition independence for each configuration was 72 h of the physical phenomenon. Results show that double-air-channel solar chimney tested configurations induced at least 70% more airflow than single-air-channel solar chimneys. Both solar chimney airflows were higher than the dwelling-unit ventilation for a space of 54 m3, and volumetric flows up to 120 m3h−1 were identified for two studied cities.