Enhancing Passive Cooling and Natural Ventilation for Houses of Various Climatic Zones of India

Abstract

In this work an arrangement based on solar energy has been proposed. The functions of the proposed system are to create natural ventilation in a room and to cool the entering outdoor fresh air. The purpose of this study is to reduce household electricity consumption by replacing the electrical ventilation and cooling system with the natural ventilation and cooling system. The proposed system comprises two subsystems, namely (i) Solar Chimney (SC) for creating ventilation, and (ii) Evaporative Cooling Cavity (ECC) for cooling the entering fresh air. The mathematical models for both the solar chimney and evaporative cooling cavity have been developed. For achieving the solution of these models a MATLAB code has been prepared. ISHRAE climate data have been used for the performance evaluation of the proposed system under different climatic zones of India. Indian has 6 climate zones; solar chimney has been found to use in all 6 climate zones for a period of the whole year. The coupled arrangement has been found suitable for (i) Hot subtropical, (ii) Tropical wet and dry, (iii) Tropical semi-arid, and (iv) Desert climate zone. The finding shows that the proposed system can save up to 1308 kWh of electricity in one year period in the Desert climate zone.