Numerical Simulation of Natural Convection in a Solar Chimney

Abstract- This paper summarizes a numerical study of natural convection in a solar chimney. The Transported fluid is the air (Pr=0.702), it is considered as a Newtonian and incompressible fluid, by using the Boussinesq approximation, the governing equations are taken to be in the vorticity-stream function formulation in hyperbolic coordinates. For heating conditions we suppose an isothermal walls of the collector (Th for the ground and Tc for the roof, with Th>Tc). Solution of the defined equations has been done with numerical control volume method. We examined the effect of the system geometry on the natural convection phenomenon in the solar chimney. Finally, the simulation results have been given as airflows and temperature patterns. Keywords- Solar chimney, Natural convection, Renewable energy, Vorticity-Stream function formulation. 1