Solar Energy 205 (2020) 142–153

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Solar Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/solener

An experimental work on the impact of new combinations of solar chimney, T

photovoltaic and geothermal air tube on building cooling and ventilation
⁎
Rania Elghamrya,b, Hamdy Hassana,c,
a
Energy Resources Eng. Depart., Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST), Alexandria, Egypt
b
Architecture Eng. Depart., Faculty of Eng., Tanta University, Tanta, Egypt
c
Mechanical Engineering Depart., Faculty of Eng., Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Renewable energy applications play a major role in covering the energy demand for building cooling and
Building ventilation. In this paper, an experimental investigation is performed on cooling and ventilation of a building
Ventilation room locating in New Borge Alarb city, Alexandria, Egypt by new combination of solar chimney and geothermal
Solar chimney air tube heat exchanger system. PV panel is installed by new technique at the chimney back to produce power
Geothermal air tube
and its performance is compared to an identical PV outside the room. The study is performed for the chimney
Photovoltaic
Temperature
and PVs facing south of an angle with the horizontal 30° and 45° and for natural and forced airflow inside the
geothermal tube. The geothermal tube and chimney ventilation systems are compared with the natural venti-
lation system of the solar chimney and window. The results indicate that the proposed systems prove their ability
to cool the room temperature up to 3.5 °C and change daily its air 42 times. Minimum ventilated air occurs at
natural geothermal tube-chimney system of angle 30°. The ratio of the total daily ventilated air by natural
geothermal tube-chimney to that by chimney-window is about 56.3% and 65% at 30° and 45°, respectively and
for heat released is 55.6% and 64%, respectively. Maximum daily heat released from the room is achieved at
chimney inclination angle 45° for natural geothermal tube-chimney-PV system. Maximum PV output power
inside the chimney represents 70% of the maximum PV output power outside the chimney which is 120 W/m2 at
chimney inclination angle 30°.

1. Introduction design elements is vital to accomplishing the required energy efficiency

It is known that buildings consume approximately 40% of the global
energy consumption for different energy consumption sectors. The
high-energy consumption in buildings is due to the use of separate glass
facades in addition to the rise dependence on mechanical methods. It is
stated that heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems
are estimated to consume approximately more than 60% of the global
energy consumption in the buildings sector (Evola and Popov, 2006;
Elghamry and Hassan, 2019). One of the main concepts to diminish
energy consumption in the buildings is utilizing passive techniques like
optimizing the solar gain by adjusting the building direction and active
systems as mechanical ventilation to create comfortable internal con-
ditions (Peng et al., 2011; Velik, 2014; Elghamry et al., 2020). Passive
designs depend for example on the exploitation of solar energy in
building design to achieve the concept of the energy consumption re-
duction by using techniques like solar chimney, Trombe wall, and wind
tower, etc. (Gou et al., 2018). The integration of passive and active
inside the buildings.
Natural ventilation is considered as one of the main principles in
passive and active building design that provides building cooling and
saves used energy. Natural ventilation system relies on the pressure
difference to move the fresh air toward the buildings. The pressure
difference can be attained by wind or buoyancy effect created by the
temperature differences or the difference in humidity values (Hirunlabh
et al., 1999). The use of solar energy techniques like PV, solar chimney,
etc. can create a large temperature difference that can improve the
stack effect for space natural ventilation. Various theoretical, experi-
mental and numerical studies were conducted on the integration be-
tween the active and passive saving energy systems in buildings that
can enhance the ventilation of the building which in turn works on the
heating or cooling indoor spaces. Solar chimney, photovoltaic, Trombe
wall, and geothermal air tubes represent ones of the more effective
techniques that work to improve the building performance. Recent
studies have examined these techniques separately or attempted to

⁎
Corresponding author at: Energy Resources Eng. Depart., Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST), Alexandria, Egypt.
E-mail address: hamdyaboali@aun.edu.eg (H. Hassan).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2020.05.049
Received 16 March 2019; Received in revised form 24 January 2020; Accepted 17 May 2020
0038-092X/ © 2020 International Solar Energy Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
R. Elghamry and H. Hassan
integrate them into various patterns to reduce buildings' energy con-
sumption and improve their interior conditions. The solar chimney is an
easy and inexpensive passive solar cooling and heating technique.
When the solar radiation falls inside the chimney, the column of air
inside the chimney is heated and this heated air is pulled up through the
opened vent at the top of the chimney pulling new air from the outside
and creating a sort of draft (chimney effect) (Bansal et al., 1993). The
solar chimney is used to regulate the temperature of the building as well
as providing ventilation. A large number of works were presented on
integrating the solar chimney for ventilation purpose theoretically
(DeBlois et al., 2013; Ghanbari and Rezazadeh, 2018; Shi et al., 2018)
and experimentally (Rattanongphisat et al., 2017; Xinyu et al., 2017).
Moreover, the solar chimney can regulate the temperature in other
applications and devices like solar cells (Sh-Eldin et al., 2013; Zou et al.,
2017b), cooling towers (Zou et al., 2017a), desalination and power
generation (Asayesh et al., 2017), air conditioning systems (Nasri et al.,
2018) etc. A review of the previous work of using solar chimney in
building heating and cooling was presented by Monghasemi and Vadiee
(2018). Ahmed et al. (2016) presented an analytical study to draw the
optimum design solutions for the parameters of the solar chimney to
perform the optimum rate of the natural ventilation by developing a
mathematical model for the overall energy balance on the solar
chimney. The study concluded that a rate of the air changing
0.019–0.033 m3/s achieves 88.2% of the standard ventilation rate
during the daytime at solar chimney inclination angle 45°, length 1.4 m,
width 0.6 m and air gap 0.2 m. Bassiouny and Koura (2008) presented a
numerical analysis on the design parameters of the solar chimney; inlet
size and width and their impact on the room ventilation. It is found
from their analysis that the chimney width has a more effective impact
on the room air change compared to the chimney inlet size. Sakonidou
et al. (2008) developed a mathematical model to outline the tilt angle of
the solar chimney that maximizes the natural airflow inside the
chimney. The numerical findings showed that changing the chimney
lengths from 1 to 12 m and tilt angle from 30 to 90° shows the validity
of the model results compared with the CFD calculation results.
Some works studied the performance of the solar chimney when it is
integrated with solar cell to produce an extra power used in buildings,
however, few works used this combination in building ventilation.
Ahmed and Hussein (2017) designed two experimental models of hy-
brid solar chimney and solar cell panel. The first one has a collector
glass roof cover and solar cell panel as an absorber with a chimney of
2 m height. While the second is similar but with solar cell panel as a
collector roof cover and plywood as an absorber in the base of the
chimney. They discovered that the first design has a higher thermal
gain than the second, however, the daily output electrical power from
the second is higher than that of the first. On the other hand, Liu et al.
(2018) presented a theoretical study on coupling the solar chimney
with photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) power plant. Their results illustrated
that PV power decreases by 28.71% without cooling but the total
output power of the system increases by 4.72% by adding the power
generated due to heating the air by the PV modules. Ndiho et al. (2014)
performed theoretically an investigation of the natural convection in
channel PV/T connected to thermal solar collector by studying two
models; Photovoltaic-thermal Building-solar chimney (PV-TBSC) and
PV-thermal reverse building-solar chimney (PV-TRBSC). The theore-
tical results revealed that the PV-TBSC model has good electrical effi-
ciency while PV-TRBSC has good thermal efficiency. Chantawonga and
Khedari (2018) presented an experimental comparative study between
the single glass window (SG) wall and the PV blinds glazed solar
chimney wall (PV-GSCHW) on the ventilation performance. They stated
that the indoor temperature of the PV-GSCHW room is much less than
the SG room.
Another way to enhance the natural ventilation cooling system and
reduce energy consumption within the building is carried out by in-
tegrating the solar chimney with geothermal air systems. This in-
tegration reduces the energy consumption by utilizing the cold or heat
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Solar Energy 205 (2020) 142–153
accumulated in the soil that could improve the natural ventilation. The
geothermal air heat exchanger is one of the passive technologies used
for heating and cooling purposes because it has both economic and
environmental benefits. The geothermal air tube is a long heat ex-
changer tube embedded underground through which air is drawn. As
air flows through the tube, it receives some of its heat from/to the
surrounding soil and enters the building as conditioned air for the
heating and cooling purpose. Serageldin et al. (2016) presented a nu-
merical study for the thermal performance of an earth-air heat ex-
changer by using ANSYS Fluent software to predict the air and soil
temperature. Their results found that the air temperature declines when
geothermal pipe diameter and length increase. For example, the outlet
air temperature reduces from 20.4 °C to 18.7 °C when the pipe diameter
rises from 4.25 to 6.75 cm. Furthermore, the increase of the air velocity
reduces the heat transfer rate from the soil to the flowing air resulting
in a decrease of the residence time required for the thermal energy
exchange. Yu et al. (2014) presented a study on coupling the geo-
thermal system with an earth tube and solar chimney. Their results il-
lustrated that an earth-to-air tube is coupled with solar collector en-
hanced solar chimney to achieve free space cooling. Rad et al. (2013)
studied theoretically the overall system performance of hybrid ground
heat source with solar thermal collectors system in heating purpose for
cold climates spaces in Canada. Their results demonstrated that the
solar energy storage in the ground could decrease a large amount of
ground heat exchanger length. The cost of the proposed hybrid system
decreased in a range of 3.7% to 7.6% compared to the conventional
system. Li et al. (2014) presented work on coupling solar chimney and
an earth-to-air heat exchanger for room ventilation. They illustrated
that the coupled system produced an acceptable quantity of cooling
capacity during the airflow for the thermal comfort of the building.
Bencheikh and Daoudji (2018) theoretically studied utilizing numerical
simulation of coupling the solar chimney and geothermal air heat ex-
change to optimize the system parameters. Simulation results illu-
strated that when the buried tubes have 0.7 m diameter and 45 m
length, they achieve the high cooling efficiency.
Based on the authors’ survey, it is found that few works have been
experimentally presented on combination only two techniques of the
solar chimney, geothermal pipes and photovoltaic in building ventila-
tion. To the authors' best knowledge, no previous work was presented
on the combination of the renewable energy system of the solar
chimney, photovoltaic and geothermal air tube (SC-PV-GAT) for
building ventilation. Therefore, in this work, an experimental study is
presented on new combination consisting of SC-PV-GAT using for room
ventilation and producing power as shown in Fig. 1. The studied room
locates at New Borge Alarab city, Alexandria, Egypt of hot semi-arid
climate conditions. In this combination, the chimney is installed at the
room top surface facing south and the PV is integrated at the chimney
base as illustrated in Fig. 1a and b of the system layout. The geothermal
air tube heat exchanger is used to cool the outside air before entering
the room which is extracted inside the room by the solar chimney effect
that is installed at the room top surface. The advantage of this PV in-
tegration is that it doesn’t need extra space to install the PV at the
building. Furthermore, the PV converts some of the incident solar ra-
diation at the back surface of the solar chimney into power and the
remitted radiation (longwave) from the PV is reflected from chimney
glass and maintained within the chimney to increase its chimney effect.
The used geothermal air tube consists of a long tube embedded inside
the earth where the tube inlet is exposed to the ambient and its output
is connected to the bottom of the room as shown in Figs. 1b and 2a. The
performance of the combination is studied in case the room is com-
pletely closed except for the geothermal air tube and solar chimney at
two inclination angles of the chimney with the horizontal 30° and 45°.
Additionally, the system is studied for natural convection ambient
airflow inside the geothermal tube by the chimney effect and forced
ambient airflow inside the tube by using a blower. Moreover, the
system performance is compared to the natural convection ventilation
R. Elghamry and H. Hassan Solar Energy 205 (2020) 142–153

(a) Image of the model

(a) Solar chimney with PV

(b) Geothermal air tube.

Fig. 2. Renewable energy system components.

2. Experimental work
(b) Model layout
Fig. 1. Experimental set up. 2.1. Methodology

An experimental work was presented to study the performance of

by using window-solar chimney and PV system which were not con-
using renewable energy techniques on building cooling and ventilation
sidered by any authors in the literature earlier. Moreover, the perfor-
and power generation in New Borge Alarb city, Alexandria, Egypt, with
mance of the PV inside the chimney is compared to an identical PV
longitude and latitude of 31.2°N and 29.9°E, respectively. The stated
locating outside the chimney and having the same direction and in-
objective of the study is performed by using the present renewable
clination of the PV inside the chimney as stated in Fig. 1b. The im-
energy system which consists of geothermal air tube heat exchanger
portance of this study is that it is carried out for hot semi-arid climate
with solar chimney including PV as illustrated in Fig. 1. The geothermal
conditions (Egypt, Alexandria) which represent many cities in the
air tube is used to cool the inlet air before entering the room to achieve
Mediterranean Sea. Moreover, this paper presents a good contribution
the cooling objective and at the same time, it provides the room with
and sight on the building ventilation using renewable energy sources
the fresh air required for room ventilation. While the solar chimney is
which decrease the fossil energy consumption within the building and
used to extract the air inside the room through the geothermal air tube
at the same time solve the ventilation problem of the inside spaces
for cooling and ventilation purposes. Moreover, the PV installed inside
which couldn’t be ventilated by using windows. Moreover, it presents a
the solar chimney is used to produce the power to cover part of the
PV power at the same space used for building ventilation which was not
required building energy. This system can do cooling, ventilation and
presented by other authors in the literature before. The remainder of
produce power by using clean and free renewable energy sources.
this paper is structured as follows: Sections 2 describes the used ex-
perimental setup, measured values and an analysis of the uncertainty
2.2. Experimental setup construction
and error of the reading. Section 3 presents the results of the presented
experimental work and their discussion. Whereas, section 4 summarizes
This experimental setup consists mainly of wooden room of square
the main output results and provides potential future research direc-
cross-sectional area of 2 × 2 m with height of 2 m and wall thickness of
tions.
3 cm based on an installed room previously (Abdeen et al., 2019). The
wooden room is insulated as shown in Fig. 1a by Styrofoam material of
low thermal conductivity of 0.03 W/m.K (Theodore et al., 2011;
Incropera et al., 2011) and thickness 10 cm. The room has an opening

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(window) facing north with dimensions of 0.8 m height and 0.8 m
width and is fabricated from clear single glass type and located at the
center of the north wall of the room as illustrated in Fig. 1a. The room
was installed behind a tall building located in the north of the room to
decrease the impact of the wind coming from the north.
A solar chimney oriented to the south is installed at the roof of the
room of 1.6 m long, 0.7 m wide and air gap thicknesses 0.3 m inclined
with horizontal with an angle of 30° or 45° depending on the studied
case. The 30° is chosen based on the latitude angle of the measuring
place to receive the maximum solar radiation on the solar chimney as
shown in Fig. 2a. However, 45° is chosen based on the recommended
optimum angle of the solar chimney obtained by previous studies
(Abdeen et al., 2019) for the same measuring place. The front side of
the chimney is constructed from 4 mm thick glass and its base is the PV
of type FSM-155 W of thickness 3.5 cm and operating temperature
between −40 °C and 85 °C as illustrated in Fig. 1b. The sides and back
of the chimney are fabricated from wood and are insulated by Styr-
ofoam material to minimize the heat loss from the chimney. The per-
formance of the PV inside the chimney is compared with another
identical PV having the same inclination angle of the solar chimney
facing the south direction as illustrated in Fig. 1a and b.
The geothermal air system consists of serpentine horizontal heat
exchanger PVC tube with an inner diameter of 0.0508 m (2 in) and total
length 5 m buried at a depth of 2 m inside the earth with the dimensions
shown in Fig. 2b. The part of the geothermal tube located outside the
earth is insulated from the surrounding by glass wool insulating ma-
terial of thermal conductivity 0.04 W/m.K (Theodore et al., 2011). The
room dimensions and solar chimney size and the materials of the geo-
thermal air tube and its size are chosen based on previous studies by
Ahmed et al. (2016), Serageldin et al. (2016), Serageldin et al. (2018),
and Abdeen et al. (2019).
2.3. Measured parameters
In this experimental work, different parameters are measured;
temperatures, air velocity, solar intensity, thermal image, relative hu-
midity, current, and volt. The temperatures on the surface of the room,
inside the room, ambient, and inside the solar chimney and geothermal
systems at different positions are measured. The air temperature inside
the room is taken as the average of the measured temperature of two
points inside the center of the room, one is at a higher level of 0.5 m and
the second is at higher level of 1.5 m from the room base as shown in
Fig. 1b. The measured temperatures are carried out by using thermo-
couples of type K. The airflow temperature at the inlet and outlet of the
solar chimney and at three points on the PV surface; upper, center and
lower are measured. Moreover, the temperatures of twenty points along
the geothermal air systems are measured from the entrance at ambient
to the exit at inlet to the room. The output signals from the thermo-
couples are transferred to a data acquisition system of type NEC DATA
LOGGER and the output results from the acquisition system are regis-
tered inside a computer as illustrated in Fig. 1b. All thermocouples are
calibrated at a constant temperature bath using standard thermometer.
The solar intensity is measured by using pyranometer of type Sigma
360. The air velocities at solar chimney inlet and outlet, inside the room
at two positions, geothermal tube outlet and inlet and wind velocity
outside are measured by using hot-wire anemometer. The relative hu-
midity outside and inside the room is also measured by using hygro-
meter of type MEDO920. The voltage and current output from the PV
are measured by digital Avometer, respectively.
P = IV (1)
where P in Watt, I in ohm and V in volts. The daily air exchange ACH of
the room in m3 is computed from:
ACH = ∑ AVt
day (2)
where A is the cross-sectional area of the chimney in m2, V is the
average inlet velocity of the air to the chimney in m/s, and t is the time
in seconds. The volume airflow rate is deduced by taking the average
velocity of four measured velocities at four different measuring posi-
tions of the air at the inlet to the solar chimney multiplying by the cross
sectional area of the chimney.
The daily heat released from the room Q in W by the renewable
energy system considering the effects of the geothermal tube and solar
chimney is calculated from:
Q= ∑ AVtρCp (To − Ti )
day (3)
where ρ is the air density in kg/m , Cp is the specific heat of air in J/
3
kg.K, Ti is the air temperature inside the room in K, and To is the am-
bient temperature in K.
2.5. Uncertainty and error analysis
The experimental error, accuracy, and uncertainty of the measured
values are considered in this experimental work. The experimental er-
rors may be due to human errors, setup instrumentations, measuring
instruments error, etc. During the experimental work preparations and
the measurements, all the necessary precautions are considered to di-
minish these errors. Also, the thermocouples are calibrated against a
standard calibrated thermocouple type k and the error was in the
normal range where the deviation between the thermocouples’ readings
and that of the standard one is from 0.1 to 0.5 °C. The uncertainty δ of
any value such as PV power (P) calculated from the experimental re-
sults is computed based on the equation (Taylor, 1997):
2 2
δ= ⎛ ∂P ⎞ δV2 + ⎛ ∂P ⎞ δI2
⎝ ∂V ⎠ ⎝ ∂I ⎠ (4)
where δV and δI are the uncertainty of the measured values V and I,
respectively. Based on the uncertainty equation, the maximum error of
the calculated PV power is ± 0.11%. The uncertainties of the measured
parameters of the different measuring instruments in the experiments
are shown in Table 1.
3. Results and discussions
The buildings ventilation and air conditioning are essential to
human comfort inside the building and indoor air quality
(Rattanongphisat et al., 2017). In some applications, it is difficult to
have natural ventilation by using external windows. Then, the active
ventilation will be a solution by using other tools like solar chimney,
geothermal air tubes, etc. In this study, an active cooling and ventila-
tion system using solar chimney and geothermal air tube heat ex-
changer is carried out of a building room. The study is carried out for
Table 1
Uncertainty of the measuring instruments.
Measuring instrument Uncertainty value

measuring temperature instrument ± 0.1 C

2.4. Results equations data acquisition system ± 0.01 °C/°C
Anemometer 0.005 m/s
Relative humidity meter ± 1.5%
The output power of the PV is computed by measuring the PV
Avometer ± 0.025%
output current I and volt V and is computed from (Soliman and Hassan, Pyranometer ± 0. 93%
2018):

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Table 2
Studied cases.
Case Measuring date Chimney inclinationangle Window Geothermal air tube

(1) PV solar chimney with natural geothermal 45° 08/09/2018 45° close open
(2) PV solar chimney with natural geothermal 30° 09/09/2018 30° close open
(3) PV solar chimney with forced geothermal 30° 10/09/2018 30° close open
(4) PV solar chimney with natural ventilation 45° 11/09/2018 45° open close
(5) PV solar chimney with natural ventilation 30° 12/09/2018 30° open close

Fig. 3. Evolution of the temperature with time.

Table 3
Comparison of the present work and the literature.
Case Reference Solar intensity Room Temperature decrease

Natural geothermal tube + solar chimney at 45° Present work 630 2.4
Forced geothermal tube + solar chimney Present work 630 3.4
Window + solar chimney (Abdeen et al., 2019) 850 1.7
Window + solar chimney (Abdeen et al., 2019) 500 0.9

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Fig. 4. Evolution of room relative humidity with time.
Fig. 5. Variation of the inlet air velocity to the solar chimney with time.
two inclination angles of the chimney with the horizontal; 30° and 45°.
Moreover, a PV is installed inside the solar chimney to supply the
building with the required power or the power required to flow the air
inside the geothermal tube as will be shown later. The analysis of this
system is performed for natural and forced outside airflow inside the
geothermal air tube. In case of forced airflow inside the geothermal air
tube, the flow rate of the air inside the tube is 0.0126 m3/s. Moreover,
the studied ventilation system is compared with natural ventilation by
using the room window with the solar chimney without considering the
geothermal air tube heat exchanger. Therefore, in this work, the per-
formance of five ventilation cases is studied and compared as stated in
Table 2. The measurements are performed during the daytime from
8:00 AM to 6:30 PM and during five successively days from 08/09/
2018 to reduce the impact of the environmental and solar intensity
conditions changes as possible. In case of PV solar chimney with natural
geothermal (cases1 and 2), the incident solar radiation on the solar
chimney heats the air inside the chimney resulting in a decrease of its
density. Then, it flows up exiting from the chimney extracting the
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Solar Energy 205 (2020) 142–153
ambient air to flow inside the geothermal air tube where it cools down
because of the lower temperature underground where it enters the
room for the required cooling and ventilation purpose. In this case, the
airflow velocity through the geothermal tube increases with increasing
the driving force of the chimney which must overcome the friction
resistance inside the geothermal tube. In case of PV solar chimney with
forced geothermal (case 3), the suction of air inside the air tube is
carried out by an external low-speed blower with the suction force due
to the heated air inside the chimney. However, in case of opened
window (cases 4 and 5), the flowing air inside the chimney due to the
chimney effect extracts the air from the room window which requires a
smaller driving force than other cases.
3.1. Impact on interior conditions
Fig. 3a illustrates the ambient temperature during the different
measuring days while Fig. 3b illustrates the impact of the different
studied cases of the studied system on the variation of the temperature
R. Elghamry and H. Hassan Solar Energy 205 (2020) 142–153

Fig. 6. Hourly ventilated air for the different studied cases.

600

500
Daily ventilated air, m3

400

300

200

100

0
PV solar PV solar PV solar PV solar PV solar
chimney with chimney with chimney with chimney with chimney with
forced natural natural natural natural
geothermal 30° geothermal 30° ventilation 30° geothermal 45° ventilation 45°
Fig. 7. Daily ventilated air for the different studied cases.

difference between the inside (room temperature) and outside the room
(ambient temperature). Fig. 3a reveals that the maximum ambient
temperature occurs at 12:30 PM and there isn’t a great difference in the
ambient temperature during the different days. Fig. 3b illustrates that
the studied ventilation systems attain a cooling impact on the room
temperature during the daytime. Moreover, it indicates that the cooling
performance of the proposed system of all cases increases with time
from the morning until about 11:00 AM and then it decreases with time
until about 3:30 PM, especially for the geothermal effect. This is due to
that at starting of the measurements, the soil temperature is cold and
with advancing the time, the ambient temperature increases and the
soil is still cold which increases the cooling effect of the cold earth
temperature. Then, after a certain time, the soil temperature increases
due to the heat from the hotter flowing air that decreases the cooling
performance of the geothermal system. It is noted that during the first
period, the cooling effect of the forced geothermal cooling is the highest
compared to other cases and with advancing the time its cooling effect
reduces compared to other cases. This is due to that at the starting, the
higher air velocity rises the heat transfer between the air and the soil
inside the geothermal air tube resulting in a significant reduction of the
air temperature and an increase of the cooling performance of the
geothermal air tube. With advancing the time, the soil is heated faster
and so the cooling impact of the forced air decreases compared to other
cases. Additionally, the results of the room temperature state that the
cooling performance of the geothermal natural cooling for the chimney
with inclination angle 45° is generally greater than this performance for
geothermal natural cooling of the solar chimney at an inclination angle
30°. The cause of this is that the driving force is generated due to
buoyancy in the chimney which increases with the inclination angle
that is responsible for overcoming the frictional force of the airflow

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Fig.8. Hourly heat released from the room.
Fig. 9. Daily heat released from the room.
inside the geothermal tubing. Fig. 3b also indicates that the maximum
cooling temperature of the proposed system attains 3.4 °C for forced
geothermal and about 2.4 °C for natural geothermal. Table 3 shows a
comparison of the performance of the present studied system on the
room cooling with the studied system by Abdeen et al. (2019) that is
composed of solar chimney with opened window. It illustrates well that
the present system achieves higher room cooling compared to the
previous studied system because of the cooling achieved by the geo-
thermal tube heat exchanger.
The evolution of the relative humidity with time inside the room for
all studied cases is illustrated in Fig. 4. This figure indicates that the
relative humidity decreases from the morning until about 12:30 PM and
then it increases with time because the relative humidity augments with
decreasing the room temperature. By comparing the results of Figs. 3
and 4, it also noted that the system with lower room temperature has
higher relative humidity. Moreover, the maximum effect of the dif-
ferent cases on the relative humidity inside the room is about 8% and
most of the day hours for all studied cases, the maximum relative hu-
midity is less than 65% which is suitable for comfort conditions espe-
cially for Alexandria coastal city whose relative humidity reaches
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Solar Energy 205 (2020) 142–153
sometimes about 80% in some summer days.
3.2. Impact on ventilated air
Air exchange is an important parameter on the human comfort and
health and indoor air quality of any building. The impact of the dif-
ferent studied cases of the ventilation system on the average inlet air
velocity to the chimney with time is illustrated in Fig. 5. This figure
demonstrates that the average inlet air velocity to the chimney in-
creases with time from the morning until about 12:30 PM and then it
decreases because the solar chimney effect increases with increasing the
incident solar radiation as will be shown later. Additionally, it illus-
trates that the inlet air velocity to the solar chimney is greater in case of
natural ventilation than geothermal ventilation. Moreover, the inlet air
velocity in case of the chimney of an inclination angle of 45° is greater
than the case of 30° because of the buoyancy force as indicated pre-
viously. Moreover, the hourly ventilated air with time for the different
studied cases is demonstrated in Fig. 6 and the total daily ventilated air
for the different studied cases is shown in Fig. 7. Fig. 6 demonstrates
that the hourly ventilated hour is greater in case of forced geothermal
R. Elghamry and H. Hassan
Fig. 10. Variation of the solar intensity with time.
airflow and the maximum ventilated air from the room is about 80 m3/
hr. Fig. 7 illustrates that the maximum total daily ventilated air is
achieved in case of forced geothermal ventilation and the minimum
daily ventilated air occurs in case of natural geothermal ventilation at
30° because of the lower inclination angle and the resistance of the air
to flow inside the geothermal tube compared to the airflow through the
room window. Fig. 7 reveals that the ratio of the total daily ventilated
air by using natural convection of the geothermal air tube to the natural
convection by using opened window is about 56.3% and 65% at
chimney inclination angle 30° and 45°, respectively. With the results of
Fig. 7, it can be estimated that the number of the daily air exchange of
the room is approximately 42 and 27 for the natural ventilation with
opened window and geothermal ventilation at chimney inclination
angle 45°. By comparing the results of the present system for the air
ventilation rate (Fig. 6) and the standard for the minimum required
ventilation rate that varies from 0.3 × 10−3 m3/s. m2 floor area to a
maximum value of 1.5 m3/s. m2 floor area for gymnasium activities
(Kohloss, 2004; and Hansen, 2017), it is found that the resulted ven-
tilation rate of the current system (varies from 0.7 × 10−3 m3/s. m2
floor area to 4.2 × 10−3 m3/s. m2 floor area) achieves the required
comfort conditions.
3.3. Impact on released heat
The amount of the hourly released heat from the room for the dif-
ferent studied cases of the ventilation systems is shown in Fig. 8 and the
total daily released heat from the room is illustrated in Fig. 9. Fig. 8
illustrates that the hourly heat released increases with time until about
noontime and then it decreases especially for the geothermal air ven-
tilation. This is due to that the cooling effect of the ventilation system
and the ventilated air increase at the beginning of the measurements as
stated previously. It also states that the maximum heat input to the
room is achieved approximately at noontime because of the highest
solar intensity at this time as will be seen later. Fig. 9 demonstrates that
the maximum daily released heat is obtained in case of PV-solar
chimney with forced geothermal airflow and the minimum occurs in
case of natural geothermal with solar chimney at inclination angle 30°.
This is attributed to the highest ventilated air and cooling of the forced
geothermal ventilation system. The results reveal that the ratio of the
total amount of the released heat from the room by using natural
convection of geothermal air tube to that of the natural convection with
opened window is about 55.6% and 64% at chimney inclination angle
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30° and 45°, respectively.
3.4. Impact on PV power
The power output from the PV generally depends on the amount of
the incident solar radiation on the PV surface and the PV inclination
angle. Moreover, for the PV inside the chimney, its power depends on
the air velocity and temperature over the PV surface where increasing
the air velocity and decreasing air temperature raise the PV output
power. Fig. 10 illustrates the evolution of the incident solar radiation
with time during the different measuring days. The legend of Fig. 10
indicates that the measured solar intensity is on the day of the indicated
case in the legend. Fig. 10 states that the solar intensity increases from
the morning until it reaches its maximum value at about 12:30 PM, then
it decreases with time until the end of the reading time. It also indicated
that the solar intensity of the measurements’ days is approximately the
same where the maximum incident solar intensity is about 729.4 W/m2
and the maximum variations between the solar intensity through all the
measuring days is about 15 W/m2. The evolution of the PV output
power with time for the different studied system cases for the PV inside
and PV outside the chimney is shown in Fig. 11a and b, respectively.
Fig. 11 illustrates that the PV output power follows the solar intensity
evolution trend where its power increases with time from the morning
until it reaches its maximum value at approximately 12:30 PM and then
it declines with time. It also states that the PV power outside the solar
chimney is greater than the PV power inside the chimney because of the
impact of the solar chimney glass which reflects some of the incident
solar radiation. Another effect is the chimney effect where the reduction
of the solar intensity falling inside the chimney and the hot air inside
the chimney decrease the PV power. Fig. 11a shows that, for the PV
outside the chimney, the PV output power doesn’t differentiate much
for the different studied cases because the solar intensity doesn’t change
greatly as stated and the maximum PV output power is about 120 W.
This figure also indicates that the PV output power at an inclination
angle 30° is greater than 45° because 30° is approximately the same
latitude angle of the measured place despite the amount of ventilated
airflow is greater in case of 45° as stated previously. This indicates that
the impact of the incident solar radiation on the PV power is dominant
compared to the amount of the ventilated air. In the case of PV inside
the chimney, as shown in Fig. 11b, the maximum PV output power is
approximately 83.4 W which represents about 70% of the maximum PV
output power outside the chimney. Additionally, it noted from Fig. 11b
R. Elghamry and H. Hassan
Fig. 11. Evolution of PV power with time for (a) PV outside chimney, and (b) PV inside the chimney.
that the maximum PV output power in case of PV inside the chimney is
attained in case of PV with forced convection airflow inside the geo-
thermal tube at an inclination angle 30° of the solar chimney. The cause
of this is that the solar chimney has about the same latitude angle of the
measuring place and it has the maximum air velocity over the PV
surface as stated previously. This also explains the cause of the smaller
PV output power in case of PV at solar chimney inclination angle of 45°
and natural geothermal. Fig. 11b indicates that the maximum variation
of the PV output power between the different studied cases of the
ventilation systems is about 8.5 W. Based on the fan characteristics, it is
found that the fan power required for forced airflow inside the geo-
thermal tube is smaller than the output PV power and then it can be
extracted from the PV power.
3.5. System validity
The current studied system (solar chimney. geothermal air tube heat
exchanger and PV) presents an efficient technique in building cooling
and ventilation compared the previous studies. Most of the previous
studies presented building cooling by using geothermal tubes or
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ventilation by using solar chimney. For example, Serageldin et al.
(2016) cooled the room temperature by about 1.7 °C from 20.4 °C to
18.7 °C to using an earth-air heat exchanger compared to 3.4 °C in the
present study. Ahmed et al. (2016) used the solar chimney to ventilate a
room with the window opened without performing room cooling and
they succeed to change the room air at a maximum rate from 0.019 m3/
s compared to 0.015 m3/s for the present work plus the present system
performs cooling and produces power. Li et al. (2014) used a large size
solar chimney of 12.2 m tall beside the building coupled with solar
collector and an earth-to-air heat exchanger for room cooling. Their
system maintains the relative humidity inside the room in the range
from 50% to 70% compared to 45% to 65% for the present system.
However, their system achieves about 9 °C temperature cooling because
of its large size compared to the present simple and small model. From
this comparison, it can be stated that the present system proves its
capability in building cooling and ventilation compared to presented
previous systems plus the present system produces extra power by the
PV.
The advantages of the present proposed system are that it performs
the cooling and ventilation of the building rooms at the same time
R. Elghamry and H. Hassan
without the need of any external power. Moreover, this system provides
the building with some of its required power from the PV installed
inside the chimney without the need of further space to install the PV.
This system doesn’t require high maintenance cost and it works for long
periods because it depends on renewable energy sources. Additionally,
this system has not a negative effect on the environment like the HVAC
system because it depends on clean energy sources. However, this
system has a disadvantage is that it couldn’t be applied in tall buildings
and has a limit to be applied. The limitation of this framework is that
this system (geothermal air tube, solar chimney, and PV) in cooling and
ventilation is valuable for the lower floors, and to apply it in the higher
floors, this requires large solar chimney size to give the required draft
force. Moreover, it is preferable for the building with a small number of
stages to give the possibility to install the chimney and connect it with
the geothermal air tube. Additionally, this system for cooling and
ventilation will work perfectly for the buildings with one or two floors
like factories, offices, stores, companies, and especially for the internal
rooms
4. Conclusions
The impact of geothermal air tube heat exchanger and solar
chimney included PV on room cooling and ventilation is experimentally
studied. Five renewable energy systems are studied and compared;
forced geothermal air tube plus solar chimney at inclination angle 30°
included PV, natural geothermal air tube plus solar chimney at in-
clination angles 30° and 45° included PV, and opened window plus solar
chimney at inclination angles 30° and 45° included PV. The results
conclude that the studied systems prove their capability in room
cooling and ventilation where the natural geothermal air tube system
decreases the room temperature 3.4 °C and changes daily the room air
42 times. The ratio of the total daily heat released from the room by
natural geothermal air tube plus chimney at 30° and 45° is 276 and
483 kJ, respectively which represents 55.6% and 64%, respectively of
the natural convection in case of opened window. The cooling perfor-
mance of the solar chimney plus natural geothermal air tube is greater
in case of solar chimney at inclination angle 45° than 30°. The max-
imum total daily ventilated air is achieved in case of forced geothermal
air tube and the minimum daily occurs in case of natural geothermal air
tube with solar chimney at inclination angle 30°. It is found that the
output PV power inside the chimney is smaller than that of the same PV
outside the chimney with a maximum reduction of about 30%. A
parametric study could be carried out to obtain the best parameters of
the solar chimney (inclination angle, dimensions, etc.) and the geo-
thermal air tubes (tube diameter, design, etc.). Moreover, a study could
be performed to show the impact of these systems on building heating
and ventilation. Also, the impact of the pressure drop through the
geothermal tube on its performance could be studied.
Declaration of Competing Interest
We disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any
financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organi-
zations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could
inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, this work.
Acknowledgement
It is a pleasure to acknowledge Ministry of Higher Education
(MoHE) of Egypt for providing a scholarship to conduct this study as
well as the Egypt Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST)
and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for offering the
facility, tools, and equipment needed to conduct this research work.
152
Solar Energy 205 (2020) 142–153
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