Experimental and Theoretical Investigation of Performance of a Solar Chimney Model, Part I: Experimental Investigation

This paper presents the experimental data that was collected from small pilot solar chimney. The experimental data together with ambient conditions are used to evaluate the performance and study the behaviour of the solar chimney; this data will be used for comparison with theoretical models in another paper [part II). The solar chimney prototype was designed and constructed at the Subrata Faculty of Engineering-Libya. The data were collected over several days of June 2011. The solar chimney system contains two main components; the solar collector and the solar chimney. The solar collector root‘ has a circular area of 126 m3, the solar chimney is a PVC tube with internal diameter of 0.2 m and the total height of chimney is 9.3 m. The measurements include the intensity of solar radiation inside/outside the collector, temperature and velocity of air at the entrance of the chimney, temperature and speed of wind outside the collector, temperature of the ground inside collector and temperature measurements of air at specific points at different levels throughout the collector. Solar irradiance was found to affect the chimney temperature and subsequently affects chimney air velocity. The experimental results showed that temperature differences of (30 - 45°C) were recorded between the ambient temperature and that of air inside the chimney in the middle of the day, where the highest air temperature of 73.4°C was recorded at the entrance of the solar chimney. The maximum air velocity of 3.6 m/s was recorded inside the solar chimney at noon on 9 June. Wind speed outside the collector had a small effect on the speed of the air inside the chimney and tends to change slightly, hence, can neglect influence of wind speed on the performance of the system. Also the experimental results indicate that such type of system can trap a sufficient amount of solar radiation, which elevates the air temperature to a sufficient value able to generate enough air flow to operate a wind turbine to produce electricity; this means the solar chimney system for electricity production can work in the north-western part of Libya in the summer time at least