Study of solar chimney in Tunisia: Effect of the chimney configurations on the local flow characteristics

The electric power production using solar chimney power plant is directly related to the velocity value along the chimney. In this work, the effect of the chimney configuration on the solar chimney power plant performance was investigated. A series of numerical simulations were conducted to simulate the turbulent flow. An experimental setup was developed in Tunisia to carry out several measurements. The comparison between the numerical and the experimental results showed a good agreement. The study focused on studying the solar chimney power plants with: standard, divergent, convergent and opposing chimney. The velocity fields, the static pressure, the magnitude velocity and the temperature distribution were presented and discussed. The results revealed that the chimney form affects the air velocity behavior. The maximum velocity emerges with divergent configuration. However, the others configurations adjust the maximum velocity location, in the chimney center for the opposing configuration, and in the chimney top for the convergent configuration. This variation is due to the static pressure distribution affected the chimney configuration change.