Investigation of various absorber surface shapes for performance improvement of solar chimney power plant

Solar chimney power plants are important for the development of renewable energy. The absorber surface shape can play a critical role in the solar chimney's performance. In the relevant literature, there is no comprehensive study on the effect of various absorber surface shapes on the performance of solar chimney. The present study aims to numerically investigate the effect of absorber surface shapes on the power generated by a solar chimney. The investigated absorber shapes include a right triangle, an equilateral triangle, a rectangle, and a semi-circle. In addition, the effect of the absorber surface height is studied. The modelling of heat transfer and fluid flow in the chimney is based on conservation equations. The finite volume method is used to solve the set of equations using ANSYS Fluent software. The model is verified by comparison with experimental data from the literature, and good agreement is obtained. The outcomes of this study show that the maximum effect is found in the case of a rectangular-shaped absorber surface. Furthermore, increasing the height of the modified absorber surface increases the generated power. The output power improves by up to 67.4% in the case of a rectangular absorber with a height of 7.5 cm when compared to the baseline flat-chimney. These findings are useful for designing efficient solar chimney.