Parametric investigation of a green tower using solar ovens as a heat collector / Zainoor Hailmee Solihin

The importance of understanding sustainable energy, especially in solar, has led to many research interests in developing new technology of renewable energy. Solar chimneys generally have very large size of solar collectors and high chimney height. Aside from the size, Solar Chimney is also known to have low efficiency. In order to be more feasible, Solar Chimney needs an improvement effort towards smaller collector and better efficiency. This will greatly attract many small and developing countries to invest in renewable energy compared to the current fossil fuel. Small in size and better efficiency produces are two major tasks that drive researchers around the world to study Solar Chimney. In terms of efficiency, most large solar collectors are in cylindrical shape. Thus, this study proposes the role of solar oven to be used as solar collector which has a rectangular shape build in smaller size and known as Green Towers. Major study showed that collector’s diameter and chimney’s height had the ratio of nearly 1:1. Nonetheless, the minimum collector diameter suitable for the same chimney height has not yet been determined. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to determine the performance of the solar oven as a solar collector for Green Tower development. Solar oven is used as the solar collector in order to reduce energy loss, better efficiency and smaller in size. This report presents the numerical simulation and validation of the field experiment of the Green Tower. Various analyses were carried out in investigating the Green Tower performances and the result shows simulation model number 7 (CFD7) recorded the highest efficiency at 2.02% and experiment model is the lowest at 0.57%. The minimum size of solar collector was determined and optimum size of Green Tower was also proposed at a chimney height to collector area ratio of 2:1. In summary, using the rectangular shaped solar collector significantly reduces the energy loss for the Green Tower; thus, improves its efficiency and overall performance.