Solar chimney—A passive strategy for natural ventilation

Passive ventilation systems are being increasingly proposed as an alternate to mechanical ventilation systems because of their potential benefits in terms of operational cost, energy requirement and carbon dioxide emission. Solar chimney is an excellent passive ventilation system which relies on natural driving force, that is, the energy from the sun. A significant amount of research work has been done on solar chimney since the 1990s. This article presents an overview of solar chimney research that has taken place in the last two decades. The review focuses on two main areas of research – the effects of geometry and inclination angle on the ventilation performance of a solar chimney. The experimental investigations of solar chimney have dominated the existing literature. However, numerical modelling of solar chimney using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique has attracted increasing attention. Moreover, this review found that solar chimney as a passive ventilation strategy has not been fully understood.