Performance parameter evaluation, materials selection, solar radiation with energy losses, energy storage and turbine design procedure for a pilot scale solar updraft tower

•Performance parameters estimation of solar updraft tower (SUT) was made.•Appropriate materials were selected for different SUT components.•Required collector area, power output and efficiency of the system were evaluated.•Amount of energy storage material needed was estimated in both mass and volume basis.•All the design input and estimated parameters were tabulated. Performance investigation of a prototype of solar updraft tower (SUT) power plant is carried out in this study. The diameters of the solar collector and chimney are of the 3.5 and 0.6m respectively. The objective of this work is to investigate the performance of SUT and to tabulate all the inputs and estimated parameters with the materials of a SUT power plant. All the three main components’ (turbine, solar collector and a chimney) process parameters are estimated and discussed. Appropriate materials are discussed and selected for solar collector, chimney, turbine and heat storage materials. Solar beam, diffuse and global radiation are estimated to analyze the performance of collector cover. Energy losses in solar collector cover and transmissivity estimations are performed to calculate theoretical energy collected in solar collector. Pressure drop inside the chimney is estimated and from that the actual power output of the turbine is calculated. The quantity of heat storage materials needed is evaluated in terms of both mass and volume. Theoretically the maximum velocity of air is achieved at the chimney base and is 2m/s. The maximum overall efficiency of the plant is estimated as 0.0028%. The maximum theoretical power output of the plant is 0.633W.