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Go to Editorial ManagerThe improvement in solar chimneys' thermal performance and thermal behavior that can be achieved by adding metal foam has been tested in computational work. The flow and heat transfer governing equations for solar chimney models were solved using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). It was solved using the control volume numerical method in ANSYS FLUENT 14.5. It is used to construct a finite volume modeling technique for solving the governing equations and the radiation heat transfer equations. With standard flat absorber plates, the results showed that heat transmission was increased by the inclusion of metal foam (10 PPI), leading to an increase in air velocity at the solar chimney of around 13.3%. The highest average air velocity with 10 PPI drops by 54.4% as the height of the absorber plate changes from 5 cm to 25 cm respectively.
The experimental analysis is conducted under the Iraqi climate conditions to investigate the performance enhancement of a solar updraft tower system (SUTS) using the porous copper foam as an absorber plate and conventional absorber plate with absorber inclination angle of 18°. In the present work, a semicircular collector is divided into two identical quarter thermal collectors to become two identical SUTS. One of the quarter circular thermal collectors contains on the metal foam as an absorber plate, while the other quarter collector on the conventional flat copper absorber plate. In this study the air inlet height is changed of (3, 5, and 8) cm. The experimental tests carried out in Baghdad city (latitude 33.3° N). Results showed that the air inlet height variation caused to enhance the solar updraft tower performance. The highest values was recorded when the air inlet height is 3 cm using porous absorber compared to flat absorber plate. Copper material foam as an endothermic surface causes a marked decrease in average surface temperature of the plate. The maximum hourly thermal efficiency of solar collector was increased to about 41.6 % and the maximum enhancement of the power output to about 45.2 % compared with flat absorber plate.