Experimental and Theoretical Performance of Mini Solar Chimney Power Plant

Abstract

Electricity production generated by sufficient amount is a critical issue over the entire world. The global warming is another critical issue. Currently, renewable energy sources are ones of the most important solutions to deal with these two issues. Aswan city is one of the hottest and sunniest cities in the world. This climate conditions makes the city an ideal place for Solar Chimney Power Plant (S.C.P.P) to produce electrical energy. In this study, a very small model of chimney height of 6m, collector diameter of 6m and chimney diameter of 0.15m is installed. The mathematical model which is based on the thermodynamic analysis of the flow inside the SCPP, is used to predict its performance .The experimental performance and the theoretical one-calculated from the mathematical model-are found to be in a good agreement. This model is used to predict the output power of a bigger model of 20m chimney height, 30 m squared collector and 1m chimney diameter which is still under construction. The results show that the bigger model can produce a theoretical power of about 600 hundreds times the smaller one. This study helps in selecting the generator power for the bigger model.