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Numerical simulations of solar chimney power plant with radiation model

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 Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 24e30

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

Numerical simulations of solar chimney power plant with radiation

model
Peng-hua Guo, Jing-yin Li*, Yuan Wang
School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A three-dimensional numerical approach incorporating the radiation, solar load, and turbine models
Received 29 March 2013 proposed in this paper was first verified by the experimental data of the Spanish prototype. It then was
Accepted 24 June 2013 used to investigate the effects of solar radiation, turbine pressure drop, and ambient temperature on
Available online 16 July 2013
system performance in detail. Simulation results reveal that the radiation model is essential in pre-
venting the overestimation of energy absorbed by the solar chimney power plant (SCPP). The predictions
Keywords:
of the maximum turbine pressure drop with the radiation model are more consistent with the experi-
Solar chimney power plant
mental data than those neglecting the radiation heat transfer inside the collector. In addition, the
Numerical simulation
Radiation model
variation of ambient temperature has little impact on air temperature rise despite its evident effect on air
Solar load model velocity. The power output of the SCPP within the common diurnal temperature range was also found to
be insensitive to ambient temperature.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
A rapid increase in renewable energy utilization has been
observed worldwide because of environmental and energy crisis
issues. The solar chimney power plant (SCPP) system presents an
interesting option for the large-scale use of solar energy. The pro-
totype at Manzanares, Spain, which ran automatically from mid-
1986 to early 1989, has proven that the SCPP is a reliable
approach in generating electricity [1,2]. As shown in Fig. 1, a typical
SCPP is mainly composed of a solar collector, chimney, and turbine.
The collector is used to heat the incoming air through the green-
house effect. The heated air flows into the chimney and finally es-
capes to the atmosphere. The chimney effect results in a large
pressure difference between the chimney base and collector
entrance. The pressure difference, often defined as the system
driving force, makes the chimney the actual thermal engine of the
system, and drives the turbine installed at the chimney base to
generate electric power. The SCPP has no adverse effect on the
environment, requires no cooling water, and has low maintenance
costs. These distinct advantages make the SCPP a promising tech-
nique for generating electricity in vast desert regions that lack
water resources but are abundant in solar energy.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ86 29 13152181528; fax: þ86 29 82668723.
E-mail address: jyli@mail.xjtu.edu.cn (J.-y. Li).
Many papers on SCPP have been published since Haaf et al. [1,2]
reported their fundamental studies on the Spanish prototype. Two
methods are generally employed to compute SCPP characteristics:
the analytical and numerical methods. The typical analytical
method is mainly based on a one-dimensional thermal equilibrium
analysis inside the collector. For example, Pasumarthi and Sherif
[3,4] published an approximate model to investigate the effects of
various parameters on air temperature and velocity distribution.
Zhou et al. [5] developed a mathematical model to determine the
power output for varying solar radiation, collector area, and
chimney height, and validated their findings against experimental
results from a small-scale pilot plant. Bernardes et al. [6] estab-
lished an analytical model to predict the characteristics of a large-
scale commercial SCPP. They also discussed the optimal proportion
of driving force used to drive the turbine. Li et al. [7] recently
proposed a comprehensive theoretical model for SCCP performance
evaluation that considers the effects of flow and heat losses on SCPP
performance.
The number of studies on numerical methods adopting the
computational fluid dynamic (CFD) programs to predict SCPP per-
formance has been increasing rapidly. As a pioneer, Pastohr et al. [8]
performed a 2-D numerical simulation on SCPP to study the tem-
perature and flow fields in the collector. A similar numerical
method was used by Xu et al. [9], the only difference being the
settings of the energy storage layer and turbine model. Ming et al.
[10] conducted numerical simulations for the Spanish prototype
with a three-blade turbine and presented the simulation results of a

0960-1481/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2013.06.039
 P.-h. Guo et al. / Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 24e30
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of solar chimney power plant.
MW-graded SCPP with a five-blade turbine. Koonsrisuk and Chit-
somboon [11,12] used numerical simulations to test their dimen-
sional analysis on SCPP and the validity of their proposed
dimensionless variables.
Compared with the analytical method, fewer assumptions are
used in numerical simulations but more detailed descriptions of
temperature and flow field could be obtained. Although many
numerical studies have been published, they mainly focused on the
2-D simulations. In addition, the radiation heat transfer inside the
system has rarely been considered in previous numerical simula-
tions. Radiation heat transfer, however, is an important factor in the
greenhouse effect and is therefore worthy of investigation.
As an early attempt in considering radiation heat transfer in the
collector, this paper first verified the 3-D numerical simulation
method incorporating the radiation, solar load, and turbine models,
by comparing with the experimental data obtained from the
Spanish prototype. Based on the proposed numerical approach, the
effects of solar radiation, turbine pressure drop, and ambient
temperature on the SCPP system performance were investigated in
detail.
Fig. 2. Main zones and boundary conditions.
25
2. Numerical models
2.1. Physical model
No experimental results on a large-scale SCPP system have ever
been reported, except for the prototype in Spain. Thus, the Spanish
prototype was selected as the physical model to verify the nu-
merical method. The computational domain, as shown in Fig. 2, is
divided into the following zones: the collector (z1), energy storage
layer (soil, z2), chimney (z3), and airflow (z4). The main dimensions
of the Spanish prototype are listed in Table 1. The collector and the
chimney are smoothly connected to facilitate the computation. As
indicated in the measured data of the Spanish prototype [2], soil
temperature at 0.5 m depth underneath the ground remained un-
changed with time. A similar phenomenon was found in the study
of Pretorius and Kröger [13]. Therefore, a ground thickness of 2 m is
believed to be sufficiently deep to facilitate the isothermal condi-
tion of the bottom boundary of the soil layer.
2.2. Models for heat transfer and airflow in SCPP
All simulations were conducted for steady flow using the finite
volume-based solver FLUENT. Heat transfer in the SCPP system
involves all three modes: conduction, convection, and radiation. In
simulating the flow in SCPP, computations using models that only
focus on conduction or convection are the simplest, whereas those
involving buoyancy-driven flow and radiation models are more
complex. Radiation heat transfer mainly occurs in the collector,
which is covered by different types of semi-transparent materials
such as glass or plastic. The cover materials are nearly transparent
for incident solar radiation but partly opaque for infrared radiation
from the ground. In the present simulations, the discrete ordinate
(DO) radiation model was adopted to solve the radiative transfer
equation for the following reasons: (1) only the DO model can be
used to model semi-transparent walls of various types, (2) only the
DO model can be used to compute non-gray radiation using a gray
band model, and (3) the DO model can work well across a full range
of optical thicknesses.
In previous studies, incident solar radiation on the ground
through the semi-transparent collector was commonly treated as
an internal heat source or heat flux. For example, Pastohr et al. [8]
and Xu et al. [9] considered solar radiation as an internal heat
source in the ground’s thin layer. In Koonsrisuk and Chitsomboon’s
study [12], solar heat absorption per unit volume of air is modeled
as a uniform heat source within the airflow in the collector. Li et al.
[14] treated the absorption of solar radiation as heat flux from the
ground to the airflow. In the present study, a solar ray-tracing
model provided by FLUENT was used to calculate the radiation
effects of the sun’s rays entering the computational domain. The
ray-tracing model is an efficient and practical approach to applying
solar loads as heat sources in energy equations. Solar radiation is
modeled using the sun’s position vector and illumination param-
eters, which can be specified by users or by a solar calculator utility
provided by FLUENT. Solar load is available for 3-D simulation only
and can be used to model steady and unsteady flows.
Table 1
Main dimensions of the Spanish prototype.
Parameter Value
Mean collector radius 122.0 m
Mean collector height 1.85 m
Chimney height 194.6 m
Chimney radius 5.08 m
Ground thickness 2m
26 P.-h. Guo et al. / Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 24e30

Flow in SCPP is a kind of buoyancy-driven flow, the strength of _ DT

which is usually measured by the Rayleigh number. Rayleigh
number less than 108 indicates a laminar flow, with a transition to
turbulence occurring over the range of 108 < Ra < 1010. The Ray-
leigh number in a large SCPP such as the Spanish prototype is
evidently higher than 1010, and its inner airflow should be a tur-
bulent flow. Therefore, the RNG keε turbulence model was selected
to describe the airflow inside the system.
The Boussinesq model was adopted in this simulation. This
model treats density as a constant value in all solved equations,
except for the buoyancy term in the momentum equation
ðr  ra Þgz  ra bðT  Ta Þg
where ra is the density of ambient air, Ta is the ambient tempera-
ture, and b is the thermal expansion coefficient. For the buoyancy-
driven flow, faster convergence can be achieved by using the
Boussinesq model than by setting air density as a function of
temperature.
2.3. Boundary conditions and solution method
The main boundary conditions are indicated in Fig. 2. The upper
boundary of the collector was set as a combined convection and
external radiation boundary condition, considering heat transfer by
convection and long-wave radiation from the external surface of
collector. Such boundary condition (b1 boundary condition in
Fig. 2) is called the “mixed” boundary in FLUENT. For such a thermal
boundary condition, the free stream temperature outside the col-
lector was set as the ambient temperature, whereas external radi-
ation temperature was set as the equivalent temperature of the sky
according to Ref. [15]
cp m
hcoll ¼ (4)
prc2 Ira
where ht, Dpt, and Qv represent turbine efficiency, turbine pressure
drop, and volume flow rate, respectively; and m, _ DT, rc, and Ira
denote mass flow rate, air temperature rise, collector radius, and
incident solar radiation, respectively. Turbine efficiency usually
ranges from 0.8 to over 0.9 for different turbine layouts, as indi-
cated in investigations conducted both analytically and experi-
mentally [19e22]. The turbine efficiency was set at 0.8 to be
consistent with other studies in predicting SCPP performance
[3,13,23,24]. Although the value 0.8 might be somewhat low for the
(1)
best efficiency point of the turbine, such an assumed value can be a
compromise, considering the large variation of operating points
and different turbine layouts in practical applications.
The SIMPLEC algorithm was applied to the couple of pressuree
velocity, and the body force weighted algorithm was selected as the
discretization method for the pressure term. Structured grid was
adopted with the grid near the walls being refined adaptively. The
second-order upwind scheme was chosen for the convective terms.
Simulation results using different grid distributions and different
strategies for grid refinement indicated that the grids are suffi-
ciently fine to obtain grid-independent solutions.
3. Validation of numerical models
Numerical investigations were validated through comparison
with the experimental data of the Spanish prototype [25]. von
Backström and Gannon [20] suggested that the ideal characteristic
curve of a solar chimney turbine is a straight line. The experimental

Tsky ¼ 0:0552Ta1:5 (2)

The temperature at the bottom of the soil layer was at 300 K and
then kept constant (b2 boundary condition). The temperatures at the
inner surface of the collector and upper surface of the ground were
determined based on the convection of the airflow in the collector,
and the “coupled” condition (b3) in FLUENT was used for such
boundaries. The collector inlet and chimney outlet were set as
pressure-inlet and pressure-outlet boundaries (b4 and b5), respec-
tively. For a buoyancy-driven flow problem with pressure boundary
conditions, no pressure difference should exist between the inlet and
outlet. Following previous researchers [8,9,16e18], pressures at the
collector inlet and the chimney outlet were both set at 0 Pa.
The Spanish SCPP has a shrouded turbine, which is different from
a wind turbine. Before and after going through the shrouded turbine,
airflow has almost the same axial velocity component, whereas
pressure changes significantly. The pressure drop across the turbine
was determined by using the pressure drop model (b6). This model
treats the turbine as an infinitely thin disk, such that a detailed
configuration of the turbine is unnecessary, but the effect of pressure
drop across the turbine can be conveniently considered. The pressure
drop across the turbine can be determined in two ways: (1) specified
using a constant value and (2) determined as a function of velocity
across the turbine. The second approach, i.e., a linear polynomial of
velocity, was applied to determine the pressure drop across the
turbine in the validation section. However, when investigating the
effect of turbine pressure drop on SCPP performance, the first
approach with the given pressure drop condition was adopted.
The power output of the turbine and the collector efficiency can
be expressed as
Fig. 3. a. Experimental data and fitting curve of load coefficient vs. flow coefficient, b.
P ¼ ht  Dpt  Qv (3) Experimental data and fitting curve of turbine pressure drop vs. updraft velocity.
 P.-h. Guo et al. / Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 24e30
data on the turbine characteristics of the Spanish prototype are
shown in Fig. 3a after reorganization and processing. Evidently, a
linear polynomial is the best fit for the experimental data of the
Spanish turbine [25], which conforms to the ideal characteristic
curve of such a turbine. As mentioned in Section 2.3, the relation-
ship between pressure drop and velocity across the turbine is
necessary for the use of the turbine model in FLUENT. The char-
acteristics of the fixed geometry turbine running at a fixed speed in
the Spanish prototype can also be plotted as the relationship be-
tween the turbine pressure drop and updraft velocity, as shown in
Fig. 3b. The relationship of turbine pressure drop against updraft
velocity is fitted as follows:
Dpt ¼ 18:87  v  57:59
The root-mean-square error (RMSE) and the coefficient of
multiple determinations, R2, are 1.698 (a value closer to 0 indicates
a better fit) and 0.9537 (a value closer to 1 indicates a better fit),
respectively, indicating that the above fitting is rational.
Fig. 4a and b shows a comparison between the simulation re-
sults and experimental data. The simulation results are consistent
with the experimental data, which indicates that the proposed
numerical method is a suitable approach for investigating SCPP
performance. The following two reasons are deemed responsible
for the slight overestimation of updraft velocity and power output:
(1) support in the collector was not included in the physical model,
Fig. 4. a. Comparison of updraft velocity between simulation results and experimental
data, b. Comparison of power output between simulation results and experimental
data.
27
such that its drag forces could not be included; and (2) the simu-
lation is for steady flows, whereas the soil layer has thermal inertia
in reality.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Effect of the radiation model on the simulation of SCPP
performance
The effects of the radiation model on the simulation of SCPP
performance could be determined by comparing the results with
and without incorporating the model in the computations. Fig. 5a
(5) shows an increase in airflow temperature rises at the exit of the
collector with solar radiation. Differences between the two
computational curves of airflow temperature rises are remarkable,
such that, a significantly higher air temperature rise would be
achieved in the case without the radiation model. This condition
means that heat losses through the collector roof by convection and
long-wave radiation are extremely underestimated. Collector effi-
ciency is shown in Fig. 5b. The predicted collector efficiencies of the
Spanish prototype with radiation model are evidently closer to the
experimental data that are approximately 30% in Ref. [2]. By
contrast, the numerical simulation neglecting radiation heat
transfer resulted in significantly higher collector efficiencies.
Fig. 5. a. Comparison of temperature rises with and without radiation model, b.
Comparison of collector efficiencies with and without radiation model.
28 P.-h. Guo et al. / Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 24e30
The greenhouse effect of the collector is responsible for the
aforementioned difference. The actual heat transfer process in the
collector is that the collector roof absorbs some radiative energy
from the ground, but only part of the absorbed energy will be re-
emitted back to the ground. Neglecting the radiation heat trans-
fer, however, would cause the ground to absorb almost all the
incident radiation energy, given that no radiation effect on the
ground is considered. We can thus conclude that the radiation ef-
fect inside the collector must be considered in simulating the flows
in SCPP.
4.2. Effects of turbine pressure drop and solar radiation on SCPP
performance
A group of constants at an interval of 20 Pa was assigned to the
turbine pressure drop in the following simulations to investigate
the effects of turbine pressure drop on SCPP performance under a
certain solar radiation condition. The effects of turbine pressure
drop and solar radiation on airflow temperature rise and updraft
velocity at the entrance of the chimney are shown in Fig. 6a and b,
respectively. Under constant solar radiation, air temperature rise
increases with increasing turbine pressure drop, which can be
attributed to the turbine blockage effect that decreases air velocity
or flow rate in the chimney. Meanwhile, when turbine pressure
Fig. 6. a. Effects of solar radiation and turbine pressure drop on temperature rise, b.
Effects of solar radiation and turbine pressure drop on updraft velocity.
drop is constant, both updraft velocity and temperature rise in-
crease significantly with solar radiation.
The computed power output of the SCPP is shown in Fig. 7. A
maximum value exists for turbine pressure drop for a specific
solar radiation. For example, when the solar radiation is 800 W/
m2, the maximum value of the turbine pressure drop allowed in
the simulation is approximately 140 Pa. By contrast, Xu et al. [9]
also assigned a set of constants to turbine pressure drop to
investigate its effect on the performance of the Spanish proto-
type. Given that the radiation model was not incorporated into
their computations, their assigned turbine pressure drop ranged
from 0 Pa to 480 Pa, which is apparently higher than the
maximum value in our study. The experimental data measured
by Haaf [2] indicate that the turbine pressure drop of the Spanish
prototype is less than 100 Pa even when solar radiation is slightly
higher than 800 W/m2. Thus, the present simulation results are
more consistent with the experimental data, which indicates that
the numerical approach proposed in this paper could provide a
more reasonable prediction of the maximum turbine pressure
drop at a certain solar radiation. An accurate prediction of the
maximum turbine pressure drop is known to be beneficial in the
determination of the design point and regulation strategy of the
turbine; otherwise, a mismatch between the turbine and the
solar chimney system will occur.
The driving force is composed of the static pressure drop across
the turbine, the exit kinetic energy from the turbine (also the dis-
charged kinetic energy from the chimney), and the flow losses. If
the total pressure of the turbine is defined as the sum of exit kinetic
energy from the turbine and static pressure drop across the turbine,
then differences between the system driving force and the total
pressure of turbine are the flow losses occurring in the flow passage
of the whole system. As Fig. 8 shows, with the turbine pressure
drop increasing, the turbine total pressure becomes closer to the
driving force, which indicates that flow losses gradually approach
zero. In the present simulations, setting a large value for the turbine
pressure drop may cause this value to be larger than the driving
force, which could not occur in actual situations. Therefore, the
computations will diverge with such an assigned value.
To investigate the flow losses in the system, the variation of flow
losses with the updraft velocity in the chimney under different
conditions is plotted in Fig. 9 and then fitted using a quadratic
polynomial. The drag coefficient of the whole system can be ob-
tained from the following fitting expression:
Fig. 7. Effects of solar radiation and turbine pressure drop on power output.
 P.-h. Guo et al. / Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 24e30
Fig. 8. Variations of the driving force and total pressure of the turbine with turbine
pressure drop and solar radiation.
1 proportional to ambient air density, thermal expansion coefficient,
Dplosses ¼ 0:2471   r  v2
2
The RMSE and R2 of the above fitting are 0.2121 and 0.9981,
respectively, which indicates that the computed flow losses are
closely proportional to the square of velocity. This condition also
verifies the rationality of the simulations.
4.3. Effects of ambient temperature on the SCPP performance
In the unsteady numerical simulations of SCPP, investigators
usually assign a constant value to ambient temperature because
changing the ambient temperature in computations is difficult [16].
In addition, ambient temperature varies even if solar radiation
changes only slightly. Thus, the effects of ambient temperature
variation on SCPP performance must be investigated. For this pur-
pose, the following simulations were conducted for the Spanish
prototype with ambient temperatures ranging from 287 K to 307 K
at intervals of 5 K, while maintaining constant values for solar ra-
diation at 800 W/m2 and turbine pressure drop at 80 Pa.
Fig. 10 shows the effects of ambient temperature on air tem-
perature rise and updraft velocity in the chimney. The variation of
ambient temperature has a negligible effect on air temperature rise,
but has an evident effect on updraft velocity. Updraft velocity
Fig. 9. Fitting curve of computed flow losses in the SCPP system.
29
Fig. 10. Effects of ambient temperature on temperature rise and updraft velocity.
decreases with increasing ambient temperature mainly because of
the variation of the density and thermal expansion coefficient of
ambient air. According to Eq. (1), the buoyancy term is directly
(6) and temperature rise. When ambient temperature increases, both
air density and thermal expansion coefficient decrease, which fa-
cilitates a decrease in buoyancy force. This effect overshadows that
of the slight increase in air temperature rise and results in a
decrease in updraft velocity.
Fig. 11 shows the effects of ambient temperature on power
output. Power output decreases almost linearly with increasing
ambient temperature. The relative deviation of the power output at
different ambient temperatures is small (see the lower figure),
where the power output under an ambient temperature of 297 K is
taken as reference. The diurnal temperature range typically varies
with the latitude, and its value is approximately 12 K for the low-
latitude region, 8.0e9.0 K for the middle-latitude region, and
3.0e4.0 K for the high-latitude region. If ambient temperature
ranges from 292 K to 302 K, which corresponds to a diurnal tem-
perature range of 10 K, the relative deviation would be approxi-
mately 3%. The relative deviation reaches nearly 6% when the
ambient temperature ranges from 287 K to 307 K, which represents
Fig. 11. Effects of ambient temperature on power output and relative deviation.
30 P.-h. Guo et al. / Renewable Energy 62 (2014) 24e30

a diurnal temperature range of 20 K. The SCPP power output is Dplosses flow losses (Pa)
evidently insensitive to ambient temperature. Consequently, the DT temperature rise (K)
assumption of a constant ambient temperature in an unsteady hcoll collector efficiency (%)
numerical simulation might be acceptable in predicting the SCPP ht turbine efficiency (%)
power output for a common diurnal temperature range. r density of air (kg m3)
F flow coefficient
5. Conclusion J load coefficient

In simulating the performance of the SCPP system, the radiation, References

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