Computational Investigation of Under Expanded Solar Chimney Power Plant

C K Akhil; Rajamurugu Natarajan; S Yaknesh

doi:10.17485/IJST/v16i32.293

Article

Computational Investigation of Under Expanded Solar Chimney Power Plant

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Indian Journal of Science and Technology

DOI: 10.17485/IJST/v16i32.293

Year: 2023, Volume: 16, Issue: 32, Pages: 2485-2493

Original Article

Computational Investigation of Under Expanded Solar Chimney Power Plant

C K Akhil¹, Rajamurugu Natarajan^2*, S Yaknesh²

¹Research Scholar, Department of Aeronautical Engineering, Bharath Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai, India
²Assistant Professor, Department of Aeronautical Engineering, Bharath Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai, India

*Corresponding Author
Email: [email protected]

Received Date:10 February 2023, Accepted Date:03 July 2023, Published Date:24 August 2023

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Objectives: To study the effect of the Area Ratio of the chimney and collector on the driving potential of a Solar Chimney Power Plant (SCPP) using computational studies. Methods: The chimney whose area ratio (AR) is greater than unity is tested for three different collector shapes. The underexpanded chimneys are subjected to different collector configurations namely fully slopped, and sloped at midway. The computational analyses are carried out in ANSYS-FLUENT R2021. The temperature, velocity, and static pressure are compared with the Manzarnes prototype properties and found that the fully sloped collector is behaving best in comparison with the other two configurations. Then, a vertical Convergent Divergent (C-D) chimney with a fully sloped collector was investigated in at open environment in real-time conditions. Thermocouple, Anemometer is used to measure the temperature and anemometer respectively. Findings: The average temperature rise inside the SCPP is found to be 10K in the simulation studies using ANSYS-FLUENT. Sloped at midway collector configuration (case-2) achieved a peak velocity of 1.4m/s which is 12% superior to the fully slopped configuration (case-1). The case-1 outperformed the manzarnes plant by 23%. The Convergent Divergent (C-D) chimney with a fully sloped collector (case-3) behaves poorly which is inferior by 23%, and 12% to case-1 and case-2 respectively. Novelty: The novelty of this work lies in the comparison and simulation of three different configurations of the SCPP. This study is useful to society as it provides valuable insights into the design and optimization of solar power plants. The findings of this study can be used by engineers and energy experts to improve the efficiency of solar power plants, reduce the cost of energy production, and contribute to the global effort toward sustainable energy sources. The study also highlights the importance of considering different configurations and design elements in the optimization of solar power plants.

Keywords: Solar chimney; CFD; Area Ratio; Experimentation; AeroThermal dynamics

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Copyright

© 2023 Akhil et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Published By Indian Society for Education and Environment (iSee)