THERMAL PERFORMANCE AND SIMULATION ANALYSIS OF SOLAR UPDRAFT TOWER

Abstract

The world community is deeply worried about the rapid depletion of fossil fuels which are not only non-renewable but also emit greenhouse gases by the combustion of fossil fuels. There can be two ways to combat such situations, the first one is the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable sources of energy and the other one is to aware the community to use the resources wisely keeping in mind the sustainable use of resources for future generations. It is very aptly said by Mahatma Gandhi “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not for anyone's greed”. Using energy efficiently can reduce the use of fossil fuels but using renewable sources of energy can completely eliminate its use. Solar energy, wind energy, hydro energy, geothermal energy, and biomass energy are considered as the major sources of renewable energy. Ocean energy, tidal energy, and wave energy are also considered as sources of renewable form of energy but much work has to be done to make these energies more affordable for the common people. Among all the forms of renewable energy, Solar energy is the one which is the most popularly known renewable form of energy and mostly all other forms of renewable energy have their origin directly or indirectly from solar energy (i.e. Sun). Therefore, the sun is the ultimate source of energy and is considered as a parent which gives birth to all other forms of energy and can power the future technologies. Solar Updraft Tower is one such technology which can power the needs of the future at minimum of the cost. A decent attempt to evaluate the performance of Solar Updraft Tower has been made by setting up an experimental model on rooftop of Mechanical Engineering Department, Delhi Technological University. The maximum collector efficiency was observes as 53.48% on Day-3 at 12:00 hrs while the minimum as 10.74% on Day-1 at 8:00 hrs. The maximum chimney efficiency of 0.67% was observed on Day-2 at 17:00 hrs while the minimum chimney efficiency was observed as 0.06% on Day-1 at 11:00 hrs. The maximum overall thermal efficiency of 9.98% was observed on Day-1 at 18:00 hrs while the minimum overall thermal efficiency was observed as 1.68% on Day-1 at 09:00 hrs.