Publications

Water scarcity has been proclaimed one of the biggest challenges in the 21st century. This study developed a novel compact solar desalination system based on a chamber (basin) and a chimney where water is evaporated and condensed, respectively. A transient numerical model based on fundamental principles was developed, which uses actual weather conditions to predict the performance of the solar tower desalination system. It was validated with the obtained experimental hourly water production and temperatures in the chimney in a city with a desert climate. A detailed thermal analysis with contours of temperature and mass fraction and ...

Solar chimney power plant (SCPP) is an ingenius concept of harnessing the solar energy for the electrical power generation, provided their efficiency is enhanced significantly. The present work focuses on the improvement of the power generation and efficiency of the plant. A finite volume CFD code is developed in FORTRAN to deal with the axisymmetric domain of the SCPP. The effect of chimney divergence angle, collector height and a novel arc and fillet radius at the chimney base is studied. For the study, an SCPP with 3 m collector diameter and 3 m chimney height with 0.05 m radius of the chimney is considered. The height of the col...

The study proposes a novel solution of integrating a solar chimney power plant (SCPP) with a water desalination pilot plant (WDPP) to enhance generating energy and fresh water. The integration was accomplished by coupling the excess heat from the WDPP to the collector of the SCPP. Hence, enhance the temperature profile within the structure for better energy production. Hourly weather data (temperature, humidity, wind speed, and solar irradiance) were gathered during the entire year and their impacts on the efficiency of the SCPP were analyzed. The performance of SCPP+WDPP was assessed in terms of the production of electrical power a...

The type of soil plays an effective role in determining the solar chimney efficiency and the cost of its construction. The aim of the present work is to study the effect of different types of grounds on the solar chimney performance, in addition to conducting an economic analysis of the use of these types. The study methodology included two aspects, one of which was experimental and other was numerical. The pebbles ground recorded the highest power output and efficiency of about 160 mW, 45%, respectively, while the lowest value was using sand of about 16 mW, 19%, respectively. The results of the economic analysis concluded that ...

Globally, countries are strategically devising and implementing plans for hydrogen production, recognizing its status as the future's primary energy fuel. This study, conducted in Irbid, Jordan, serves as a case study focusing on producing green hydrogen by integrating a Solar Chimney Power Plant (SCPP) with a nuclear power plant (NPP). The innovative design of the proposed SCPP involves the incorporation of a water pool and an electrolyzer station, facilitating the production of desalinated water, green hydrogen, and oxygen, and leveraging the excess waste heat generated by the NPP to enhance the overall system performance. The pro...

This paper introduces a composite wall integrated with a solar chimney and a wet porous layer for evaporation cooling without consumption of electrical power, in which the airflow is driven by the buoyancy force from solar chimney effect, and water for evaporation on surface is supplied by capillary forces in wet porous layer. A numerical study on heat and mass transfer in composite wall was conducted to analyze the impact of environmental conditions and composite wall structure on cooling performance. More convection between airflow and surface of porous layer under higher solar irradiation, and larger evaporation on surface of wet...

This research aims to create an admissible source for specifying the relation between the plant's output power and specified geometrical parameters unique to each simulated chimney dimension. In the current study, the solar chimney output power has been studied considering 49 solar chimneys, including different collector diameters, chimney heights, and chimney diameters. The study employs the Ansys-CFX to simulate the numerical model for the unsteady k-ε turbulent flow for a vast number of geometries. The obtained results indicate that the velocity as the main factor in generating the output power has significantly improved by elev...

Current research efforts on solar chimney are much on those configurations with single space or single vent, hampering its applications in complex buildings. To expand its implementation, the viability of solar chimney in multi-storey atrium buildings was explored numerically and theoretically. It was known that its natural ventilation performance can fulfil the WHO requirements (i.e., 6 air change per hour, ACH) even under low solar radiation of 200 W/m2 if it is appropriately designed, such as cavity gap (d), cavity height (Hc), solar radiation (Q), and window width (W). Its natural ventilation rate was found to be positively line...

Urban air pollution has recently become a pressing challenge, and innovative solutions are needed to reduce it. The current study proposes and investigates the performance of integrating a solar chimney system with an air filtration unit to mitigate urban air pollution and generate electricity simultaneously. A comprehensive computational fluid dynamics model coupled with optimization techniques is proposed to analyze and optimize the design parameters from system performance and cost perspectives. A multi-objective optimization is performed to determine the optimal placements of the air filter and geometric parameters of the hybrid...

This paper presents a solar chimney that acts as a heat accumulator. It is based on its alternating charging (melting of the phase change material—PCM) and discharging (solidification), which helps to save energy and ensures stable operation of the solar chimney. In this paper, special attention has been paid to the heat dissipation process (solidification of the PCM). The theoretical model of solidification has been solved in an original way. This paper presents a new simple theoretical model for the solidification of the PCM on a flat plate and presents the results of numerical tests. The theoretical model presents a method for ...