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Batteries and alternative sources of energy
Published in John Bird, Science and Mathematics for Engineering, 2019
(ix) Solar Updraft Tower: A solar updraft tower is a proposed type of renewable-energy power plant. Air is heated in a very large circular greenhouselike structure, and the resulting convection causes the air to rise and escape through a tall tower. The moving air drives turbines, which produce electricity. There are no solar updraft towers in operation at present. A research prototype operated in Spain in the 1980s, and EnviroMission is proposing to construct a full-scale power station using this technology in Australia.
Batteries and alternative sources of energy
Published in John Bird, Electrical and Electronic Principles and Technology, 2017
Solar Updraft Tower: A solar updraft tower is a proposed type of renewable-energy power plant. Air is heated in a very large circular greenhouse-like structure, and the resulting convection causes the air to rise and escape through a tall tower. The moving air drives turbines, which produce electricity. There are no solar updraft towers in operation at present. A research prototype operated in Spain in the 1980s, and EnviroMission is proposing to construct a full-scale power station using this technology in Australia.
An Experimental Study on Performance Assessment of Solar Updraft Tower Power Plant with Guide Vanes
Published in Heat Transfer Engineering, 2022
Pritam Das, V. P. Chandramohan
The increased concerns over climate change, global warming, and energy security lead to paying more and more effort toward the development of various technologies to utilize renewable energy sources. Solar updraft tower (SUT) or solar chimney power plant is one of such viable technology for utilizing solar energy for power generation applications. The buoyancy principle and greenhouse effect are the basic working principle behind the concept [1, 2]. The SUT plant consists of a collector cover, absorber plate, solar tower or chimney and a turbine. The collector cover and absorber plate harness the solar energy and result in increasing the air temperature. The density of air decreases and moves upward due to the increase in its temperature. The kinetic energy of upward moving air is converted to electricity through the turbine coupled with a generator which is placed at the base of the tower. Apart from power generation applications, SUT can be useful for other applications such as desalination of water [3], agricultural food drying [4, 5], building ventilation [6] and air pollution mitigation [7]. The SUT plants have enormous advantages such as simple design, higher operational reliability, and long service life with zero emission. However, the thermal efficiency of the system was very low due to being constrained by environmental parameters such as ambient temperature and solar flux. The first prototype was developed at Manzanares city of Spain in the 1980s [1]. A 50-kW capacity plant was built with the chimney height (Hch), diameter (Dch) and collector diameter (Dap) of 194.6 m, 10.16 m, and 244 m, respectively. The plant operated successfully for 7 years and produced 36 kW power. The maximum velocities achieved were 15 m/s and 9 m/s under no-load and load conditions, respectively [2]. However, the Manzanares plant was collapsed due to a windstorm. After that, many researchers put interests in the area of the SUT plant and studied its thermo-fluidic behavior and thermal performance enhancement through various experimental, analytical, and numerical studies.