Center for Energy Technology

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Browsing Center for Energy Technology by Author "Ashenafi, Tesfaye"

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    Design and Development of low Power Output Solar Chimney Power Plant
    (Addis Ababa University, 2018-07) Ashenafi, Tesfaye; Solomon, Teklemariam (PhD); Tewodros, Walle
    In order to convert solar energy resource into useful power source different technology has been used so far. SCPP is proposed to be a cost-effective sector for the production of electrical energy in a large scale for the future. In SCPP system solar air collector, chimney tower and turbine are the three essential main components. In this study a detail design and modeling of SCPP is investigated for maximum power output of 30 ����. The optimization of geometry for each component is modeled using MATLAB software, Moreover MATLAB is used to predict the performance of large scale electricity generation from the plant. ENERGY 2D software is used to study flow characteristics of air temperature inside the collector. As a result for 30 kW power output the selected optimized dimensions: chimney height, collector diameter, chimney diameter and collector height (distance between the edges of collector and the ground) are estimated to be 15m, 15m, 0.2m and 0.2m respectively. For a fixed chimney diameter and collector height, an increase in the height of the chimney rises the power output upto a certain optimum height, an increases in chimney height beyond the optimum point results an energy loss due to pressure drop along the chimney will start to dominate the energy rise due to the stack effect. The model developed is scaled down to a chimney height of 3 �� and collector diameter of 2 �� with maxmum power output of 32 W. In the experiment under investigation the characteristics of the temperature inside the collector throughout the day was studied by varying height of the collector above the ground from 0.17 m upto 0.4 m. The temperature of the fluid is minimum when the collector height is 0.4 m and maximum at 0.17 m. The result obtained for a temperature difference between collector exit and collector inlet from the comparison of experimental and simulated modeled are in a good agreement under a certain condition. So, the implementation of solar chimney power plant as a rural electrification is feasible with the potential to provide electrical energy throughout the day for a desired potential.