A Study Of Solar Chimney Performance Using Fluent Software

A solar chimney is a solar power plant which generates mechanical energy (usually in terms of turbine shaft work) from the hot rising air that is heated by solar energy. This project is a study of Solar Chimney performance using FLUENT software. Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) modeling techniques were used to assess the impact of canopy height (hc) and the tower height (ht) to the performance of the solar chimney. Due to time constraint, the simulation only proceeds with variable of canopy height (hc) and tower height (ht). This report consist of 5 chapters; introduction, literature review, methodology, results and discussions. The method for the simulation basically involved 3 steps which are pre-processing, solving and post-processing. The operating conditions which includes in the simulation are taken from the experimental works. The results from the simulation which are air velocity at chimney inlet (Vin) and fluid temperature (Tfluid) are then used in the calculation of collector performance ( ) and system efficiency (η). The results showed that the highest collector performance and system efficiency is when the canopy height (hc) and chimney height (ht) was set at 0.2m and 2.6m respectively.