Improvement of Power Generation on Solar Tower by Thermal Updraft Wind

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to improve efficiency of a solar tower with a fluid dynamical approach.  A solar tower can be designed and constructed at a relatively low cost. However, the energy output tends to be small for its physical size compared to the ones of other renewable energy production systems. The technical improvement on this kind of generation system has been greatly decelerated since the termination of the operation of Spanish pilot plant in 1989. We have focused on tower part of the system to seek the enhancement on the power output of the turbine inside. As a result of our fluid dynamical shape optimization, a diffuser shaped tower is employed to increase the flow speed inside for a scaled model experiment.