Experimental study of geometrical and climate effects on the performance of a small solar chimney Mehran Ghalamchi a , Alibakhsh Kasaeian a,n , Mehrdad Ghalamchi b a Department of Renewable Energies, Faculty of New Science and Technologies, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran b Department of Energy Engineering, Faculty of Environment and Energy, Science and Research branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran article info Article history: Received 10 November 2013 Received in revised form 20 October 2014 Accepted 11 November 2014 Keywords: Solar chimney Solar energy Renewable energy Collector abstract Nowadays, referring to the increasing rate of environmental pollution and limitation on fossil fuel resources, the use of sustainable energies seems to be inevitable and an absolute necessity for the world. Renewable energies are known as the best alternative for solving the energy shortage and CO 2 emission problems. Among the renewable sources, solar energy plays a significant role in aspects of accessibility of resource and diversity of energy conversion means. Solar chimney is a power plant that uses solar radiation to produce electricity by the created wind at the entrance of chimney. A solar chimney pilot power plant with 3 m collector diameter and 2 m chimney height was designed and constructed in University of Tehran, Iran. The temperature distributions and air velocity were measured and evaluated. The temperature difference between the chimney inlet and ambient reached to 26.3 1C. The output data for different collector inlet heights were obtained and the report shows that reducing the inlet size has a positive effect on the solar chimney power production performance. The air inversion at the latter of the chimney was not observed and it was found that this phenomenon directly associated with the geometry. The maximum air velocity of 1.3m/s was recorded inside the chimney, while the collector entrance velocity was around zero. & 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 425 2. Solar chimney set-up................................................................................................. 426 3. Results and discussion................................................................................................ 428 3.1. Temperature changes .......................................................................................... 428 3.2. Air temperature per different collector inlet size..................................................................... 428 3.3. Daily and monthly variation ..................................................................................... 429 4. Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 430 References ............................................................................................................. 430 1. Introduction The concept of solar chimney power technology was first introduced in 1931 by Hanns Gunther and the first pilot of the solar chimney power plant was constructed in Manzanares, Spain in the early 1980s. After that, Haaf et al. and Schlaich presented the overall performance of the solar chimney. They also evaluated the results for the prototype power plant in Manzanares in 1982 [1–3]. Then, Mullet presented a simple treatment of the thermodynamics of the solar chimneys and the governing equations for efficiency as a function of design parameters [4]. As solar chimney systems can make significant role in energy supplies of those countries where there is abundant sunlight and plenty of wasteland, researchers have carried out many studies on this technology. In the recent few decades, more and more researchers have shown strong interest in studying solar thermal power produc- tion technology for its huge potential of applications all over the world. Gannon and Von Backström proposed a mathematical model of a single rotor layout for a large-scale solar chimney. The results showed that the inlet guide vanes improve the overall efficiency [5] and also in Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rser Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2014.11.068 1364-0321/& 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. n Corresponding author. Tel.: þ98 91 21947510; fax: þ98 21 88617087. E-mail address: akasa@ut.ac.ir (A. Kasaeian). Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 43 (2015) 425–431