Performance of an L-shaped solar chimney with different ratios of the horizontal and vertical portions

Abstract

As one of the most common methods for natural ventilation of building, solar chimney has been studied widely in the literature. Various forms of solar chimney have been proposed for enhancing its performance for a specific application, i.e ventilation and/or heating. In this work, we examined performance of an L-shaped comprising horizontal and vertical air channels connected serially by a numerical model based on the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method. Two different total lengths and gaps of the chimney were tested. The considered parameters included the flow rate, temperature rise, and thermal efficiency. The results show that as the horizontal portion is longer than the vertical one, the flow rate decreases while the temperature rise increases. The variation of the thermal efficiency depends on the ratio between the gap and the total length of the air channel. The findings can help to select suitable configurations of an L-shaped for a specific cooling or heating application.