Author(s)

M. A. Serag-Eldin

Abstract

The paper presents a new design for solar chimney plants to be erected on mountainous terrain. The objective is to exploit the height of nearby mountains to replace the conventional vertical chimney by a duct built over the steep side of the mountain. The concept is evaluated here employing a computational model involving three-dimensional governing equations, describing mass, momentum and energy balances, in addition to transport of two turbulence quantities. A typical application is demonstrated for a 450 sloped mountain. The concept is shown to be plausible and offers many advantages over conventional chimney designs. Keywords: solar chimneys, solar energy, renewable energy, buoyancy driven flows, solar power plants. 1 Introduction The present paper introduces a modification to the conventional solar chimney plant in order to exploit the available heights of any nearby available mountain. The new design is evaluated by means of a suitable mathematical model. The paper starts in this section by describing the conventional solar chimney plant and then introducing the suggested design modifications. The next section presents the adopted mathematical model. The model is then applied to predict the flow field and performance of a demonstration case, and the results are displayed and discussed. The advantages of the new design are listed, and finally, a summary and conclusions is presented.

Keywords

solar chimneys, solar energy, renewable energy, buoyancy driven flows, solar power plants.