Studying the possibility of a combined hybrid solar chimney power plant with a gas turbine

It has been observed during the production process of a solar chimney that the ambient temperature at the collector inlet is the main reason for the system weakness. In this paper, an improved design concept depending on coupling a solar chimney with a gas turbine has been presented. Here, increasing the efficiency and reducing the specific costs (€/kWh) of the solar chimney power plant are the main purposes of this study. The exhaust gas of the turbine will be injected either at the inlet or the middle of the collector, which allows a quick increase of the efficiency and recovering the energy from the exhaust gas. For conducting the numerical simulations, the Fluent software will be used. The results showed that in the present method the velocity at the inlet of the chimney and the outlet of the collector increases together with the temperature to high values. This increases in turn the power production rate till ten times (from 50 to 500 KW). Consequently, the specific costs will be greatly improved. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 2017