Numerous studies about the use of solar chimney for air conditioning, drying, and
electrical power production were performed. The present study considered first
the heat transfer process and the fluid dynamics in the collector and the chimney
tower and extended later by a parametric study on the effects of the geometrical
parameters. A validated CFD code was adopted to the solar chimney shape to
resolve the governing equations (continuity, momentum, and energy equations).
The investigation displays a necessity for a more detailed analysis of such
systems, which is essential for an ample definition of the design rules. The
available literature is scarce on this type of analysis, as research mostly
concentrates on the evaluation of the global performance of such systems. For the
design of real systems, more detailed studies of the geometrical and operational
aspects are needed, involving meteorological conditions and geometric
performances. This work is based on understanding the mechanisms of flow and
transfer of natural convection in two-dimensional configurations using the CFD
software ANSYS Fluent to find the optimal design that allows adequate thermal
control and maximum energy performance. Besides, we have studied numerically
the effect of the geometrical parameters, such as the chimney diameter, the
chimney height, the collector diameter, the collector slope angle, and the collector
height, thus to obtain the optimal parameters.
