Performance of a wall solar chimney at different opening areas

This paper reports effects of the opening areas of a wall solar chimney on the flow rate and heat transfer performance. Previous studies showed that the opening size is among the most important factors which affect the performance of solar chimneys. However, such effects for a wall-attached solar chimney whose openings are vertical have not been reported in the literature. The performance of a wall solar chimney was simulated with a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tool in this paper. The induced flow rate and Nusselt number were compared for various inlet and outlet areas. The results show that the most influencing factor is the ratio of the inlet and the outlet areas. Particularly, the heat transfer coefficient and flow rate approach constants as the inlet or outlet area is above twice the channel gap. The findings suggest that the optimum opening height is equal to the channel gap.