Numerical modelling of a solar chimney power plant

A solar chimney power plant is a relatively new concept for power generation, based on renewable energy, combining the greenhouse effect with the chimney suction. The present study involves mathematical modelling of the system, based on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach. The technical features of solar chimney power plant are analysed by use of CFD technique, as a way for effective optimisation of the object’s geometry and thermo-fluid aspects. The created numerical domain represents the complete volume of the object under consideration, with total height of 100 m, chimney’s base radius of 6.25 m, chimney’s top radius of 10.5 m and roof radius of 100 m. The numerical grid consists of 276000 volume cells, 729242 faces and 190156 nodes. The governing equations for mass, momentum and energy are solved using a commercial CFD code. The computation is performed using the assumption of steady 3-D flow and the turbulence is taken into consideration with the k- realizable model. The discrete ordinates (DO) model is selected as thermal radiation model, since it represents properly the physicality of the radiation energy transfer phenomenon and due to the opportunity of applying a solar load directly to the radiation model. The obtained innitial results demonstrate the capability of the CFD, as a powerful research and engineering tool for analysis of complex aerodynamic and thermal systems