The solar updraft tower is a proposed type of renewable-energy power plant.

It combines three old and proven technologies: the chimney effect, the greenhouse effect, and the wind turbine. Air is heated by sunshine and contained in a very large greenhouse-like structure around the base of a tall chimney, and the resulting convection causes rising airflow to rise through the updraft tower. The air current from the greenhouse up the chimney drives turbines, which produce electricity. A successful research prototype operated in Spain in the 1980s, and many modelling studies have been published as to optimization, scale, and economic feasibility.

Also known as a solar tower power station, an electricity-generating station based on the simple principle that hot air rises. Surrounding a very tall ventilation tower or chimney is a wide transparent canopy that gently rises toward the center and under which solar radiation is trapped as in a greenhouse. The air underneath the canopy is warmed so that it moves inwards and eventually rises through the central tower. To replace the air that escapes, cooler air from the edge of the canopy flows inward and becomes heated in its turn. Turbines built into the central tower convert the kinetic energy of the hot rising air, by means of a generator, into electricity.

The original idea of the solar chimney power station came from Jrg Schlaich at the Institute for Construction and Design (Institut fr Konstruktion und Entwurf), University of Stuttgart. A prototype station in Manzanares, south of Madrid, delivered power, with a peak output of 50 kilowatts, almost continuously from the middle of 1986 until the start of 1989. The Manzanares collector, with a diameter of 240 meters, surrounded a central tower 195 meters high with a diameter of 10 meters. A much larger solar tower station has been proposed in Australia. Called the Solar Mission Project, it would be able to generate 200 MW of electric power enough for 200,000 homes. Its central tower would rise to around 1,000 meters, making it the tallest engineered structure in the world, and be surrounded by a translucent collector roof approximately 3,500 meters in radius.

Energy Tower Downdraft

Down Draft Contents 1 Concept summary 2 Cost/efficiency 3 Implementation 4 Potential Problems 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Concept summary An energy tower (also known as a downdraft energy tower because the air flows down the tower) is a tall (1,000 meters) wide (400 meters) hollow cylinder with a water spray system at the top. Pumps lift the water to the top of the tower and then spray the water inside the tower. This cools the hot air hovering at the top. The cooled air, now denser than the outside warmer air, falls through the cylinder, spinning a turbine at the bottom. The turbine drives a generator which produces the electricity. The greater the temperature difference between the air and water, the greater the energy efficiency. Therefore, downdraft energy towers should work best in a hot dry climate. Energy towers require large quantities of water. Salt water is acceptable, although care must be taken to prevent corrosion. The energy that is extracted from the air is ultimately derived from the Sun, so this can be considered a form of solar power. Unusually, this form of solar power also works at night, because air retains some of the day's heat after dark. However, power generation by the Energy tower is affected by the weather: it slows down each time the ambient humidity increases (such as during a rainstorm), or the temperature falls. An related approach is the solar updraft tower, which heats air in glass enclosures at ground level and sends the heated air up a tower to drive a turbine at the top. Updraft towers don't pump water, which increases their efficiency, but do require large amounts of land for the collectors. Land acquisition and collector construction costs for updraft towers must be compared to pumping infrastructure costs for downdraft collectors. Operationally, maintaining the collector structures for updraft towers must be compared to pumping costs and pump infrastructure maintenance.

Cost/efficiency

Zaslavsky, et al., estimate that depending on the site and financing costs, costs would be in the range of 1-4 cents per kwh, well below alternative energy sources other than hydro. Pumping the water requires about 50% of the turbine's output. Zaslavsky claims that the Energy Tower would achieve up to 70-80% [3] of the Carnot limit. If the conversion efficiency turns out to be much lower it is expected to have an adverse impact on projections made for Cost of Energy. Projections made by Altmann[4] and by Czisch[5][6] about conversion efficiency and about Cost of Energy (cents/kWh) are based only on model calculations[7], no data on a working pilot plant have ever been collected. Actual measurements on the 50kW Manzanares pilot solar updraft tower found a conversion efficiency of 0.53%, although SBP believe that this could be increased to 1.3% in a large and improved 100MW unit.[8] This amounts to about 10% of the theoretical limit for the Carnot cycle. It is not unreasonable to expect a similar low conversion efficiency for the Energy tower, in view of the fact that it is based on a similar principle as the solar updraft tower.

Implementation Currently, no known physical implementation of an energy tower exists. However, there are people who say that making a tower to test its capacity can be much easier. This is now being tested in the Netherlands.

Solar updraft tower

From Wikipedia(View original Wikipedia Article) Last modified on 2 June 2011, at 22:57 This article is about a type of power plant. For other uses, see Solar tower (disambiguation).

Schematic presentation of a Solar updraft tower

The solar updraft tower is a renewable-energy power plant. It combines three old and proven technologies: the chimney effect, the greenhouse effect and the wind turbine. Air is heated by sunshine and contained in a very large greenhouse-like structure around the base of a tall chimney, and the resulting convection causes air to rise up the updraft tower. This airflow drives turbines, which produce electricity.