Passive ventilation through a solar chimney

Author: Jaume Ojer Ferrer

Advisor: Dr. Jordi Andreu Batallé
Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Diagonal 645, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.

Abstract: the aim of the current thesis is to present a physical model with the purpose of describing the perfor-
mance of a solar chimney. It has to be in contact with an enclosure allowing the airflow with the outside. This effect
would be the result of the natural convection caused by the incidence of the solar radiation throughout the day. Con-
sequently, the hypothetical cooling of the enclosure itself in summer will be studied. To do so, the dependency of
the chimney’s instantaneous efficiency on different structural parameters as the length or the tilt with respect to the
horizontal plane will be analysed. The model is based on the energy balance between the different parts of the chim-
ney; a few equations which will be solved iteratively. Therefore, several magnitudes involved in the process will be
determined, such as the different uniform temperatures or the air mass flow rate through the chimney.

I. INTRODUCTION
A perfectly appropriate case for this study is the air venti-
lation that has to be present in the farms belonging to the
swine sector. Throughout the last decades, farmers have been
investing big sums of money to provide huge amounts of
energy from electricity or the burning of fossil fuels to the
complex ventilation systems installed in the farms. The only
intention for this is keeping a suitable room temperature so
that the different stages as the gestation, lactation or weaning
are satisfactorily completed.
For this reason, the ventilation which doesn’t require a
consumption of artificial energy is known as passive, and it is
mainly aimed for cooling. In this case, the chimney will
allow the air stream to passively ventilate the farm: the solar
energy will be absorbed in order to heat up the air of the
chimney channel. In this way, it will raise by a difference of
pressure and density with the outside, where the temperature
is lower; this phenomenon is known as natural convection.
FIG. 1: The built-in solar chimney’s structural distribution.
Therefore, the objective of this thesis isn’t only to deter-
mine the physical magnitudes involved in it. Other purposes The next wall is another issue that must be analysed apart
include knowing the most adequate way to pose and solve the from this study. Liu and Li [5] were pioneers in the experi-
problem and also finding out in which circumstances the mental study of a solar chimney PCM-based (L3). The phase-
efficiency of the ventilation by the chimney is maximum. change material has the function of absorbing the heat
radiated from the sun during the daytime, storing it to release
it at night-time. After the sunset, without radiation the
II. PHYSICAL MODEL temperature of the air channel won’t be high enough to cause
Tackling a convective problem is not an easy task. Thus, natural convection. For this reason, the integration of a PCM
the mathematical model that will be developed here must be unit into the solar chimney could improve and optimise the
as simple as possible, and only in this way we will able to utilization of the solar energy with the aim of lengthening the
find a solution to all of the parameters of the problem. night ventilation of the enclosure, in this case the farm.
The chimney position is also a primary factor that com-
A. The solar chimney pletely modifies the resolution of the physical problem. In
First of all, before analysing the physical scenario, this this study we will consider two alternatives of this: built-in or
has to be well defined. In this way, we will start by present- on the roof. In both cases, the presence of an insulation is
ing the chimney’s structure. The part that is directly exposed essential, and thus the next part will be an insulator (L4) that
to the outside is a translucent glass cover (L1), which would prevents heat losses. Lastly, only in the built-in chimney, the
allow the transfer of the solar radiation. Consecutively, the farm’s own wall (L5) will cover the insulation, while for a
solar heat absorbing wall (L2) is found, consisting of a chimney on the roof, the latter will be in contact with the
blackened surface with the objective of capturing all possible outside.
radiation. The space that is between these two is the flow
B. Overall thermal energy balance
channel, that is to say where the air will flow from the bottom
to the top. This is due to the heat captured by the wall that is Ong [7] was one of the first to propose a thermal network
transferred to the air channel. Therefore, in this order, the in the form of algebraic equations describing the heat
room air will enter into the chimney, raise up, and finally exchange across the different parts of the chimney. In this
leave the channel. study, we’ll work with four equations:
 FIG. 2 & 3: Representative schemes of built-in chimney (left) and tilted on the roof (right).

glazing 𝑆1 + 𝑄𝑓→1 + 𝐾2→1 = 𝐾1→𝑠 + 𝑄1→𝑎 (1) Each of these is always defined in the same way:

air 𝑄2→𝑓 = 𝑞̇ + 𝑄𝑓→1 (2) 𝑄𝑖→𝑗 = ℎ(𝑇𝑖 − 𝑇𝑗 ) (8)

wall 𝑆2 = 𝑄2→𝑓 + 𝐶2→4 + 𝐾2→1 (3) 𝐾𝑖→𝑗 = 𝜀𝑖→𝑗 𝜎(𝑇𝑖4 − 𝑇𝑗4 ) (9)

and depending on the position of the chimney 𝐶𝑖→𝑗 = 𝑈(𝑇𝑖 − 𝑇𝑗 ) (10)

built-in 𝐶2→4 = 𝐶4→𝑟 (4) 𝑊

where 𝜎 = 5,6704 · 10−8 2 4 is the Stefan-Boltzmann
𝑚 𝐾
roof 𝐶2→4 = 𝐾4→𝑠 + 𝑄4→𝑎 (5) constant. ℎ could be ℎ𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑑 (from McAdams [6], when one of
the exchangers is the environment) or ℎ𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑣 (when this is the
where the numbers in subscript refer to the different parts of fluid), and thus the heat transfer coefficients are:
the chimney (L1, L2…) and the letters are:
ℎ𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑑 = 5,7 + 3,8𝑉 (11)
Subscript Meaning
𝑓 fluid (air channel) 𝑁𝑢 𝑘𝑓
ℎ𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑣 = (12)
𝑠 sky 𝐷𝐻
𝑎 environment (outside)
−1
𝑟 room (farm) 1 1
𝜀𝑖→𝑗 = ( + − 1) (13)
𝜀𝑖 𝜀𝑗
TABLE 1: Nomenclature of the system of thermal equations.
1
On the other hand, if 𝐻 refers to the global solar irradia- 𝑈= (14)
𝑊 ∑𝐿𝑖 𝑅𝑖
tion on a fixed plane [ 2 ] that hits the surface of the chim-
𝑚
ney, 𝑆 is the one that is absorbed, with the distinction of: with 𝑉 = 1 𝑚/𝑠 the wind velocity, 𝑁𝑢 the Nusselt number, 𝑘
the air thermal conductivity, 𝜀 the emissivity, 𝑅 the thermal
𝑆1 = 𝛼1 𝐻 (6) 𝐿
resistance of the heat exchanger and 𝐷𝐻 ≡ the hydraulic
10
diameter, where 𝐿 is the length of the chimney. All of these
𝑆2 = 𝜏1 𝛼2 𝐻 (7)
coefficients are also specified in the appendix.
where the different coefficients are specified in the appendix. In this way, the thermal network is based on four equa-
Moreover, the heat exchanges are: tions with four unknown variables: 𝑇1 , 𝑇𝑓 , 𝑇2 and 𝑇4 , which
are considered to be uniform. Finally, the term 𝑞̇ is analysed
Latin symbol Transfer mechanism in the following subsection.
𝑄 Convection
𝐾 Radiation C. Air mass flow rate
𝐶 Conduction The heat transferred to the air flowing in the chimney
channel is given by:
TABLE 2: Nomenclature of the transferred energy.
𝑚̇𝑐𝑓 𝑚̇𝑐𝑓
𝑞̇ = (𝑇𝑓𝑜 − 𝑇𝑓𝑖 ) = (𝑇 − 𝑇𝑟 ) (15)
𝑊 𝛾𝑊 𝑓

Final Degree Thesis 2 Barcelona, June 2019

 𝐿2 An interesting study is also the instantaneous efficiency
We consider a square chimney gap; then, 𝑊 ≡ is the area
10 of the chimney. Ong proposed the following:
of the wall, while 𝑐 is the air specific heat that depends on the
temperature. 𝑇𝑓𝑖 = 𝑇𝑟 is the inlet temperature at the bottom of 𝑞̇
the chimney and 𝑇𝑓𝑜 is the outlet temperature at the top of it; 𝜂= (18)
𝐻
the latter is specified in the appendix, as well as the factor 𝛾.
There are some ways of computing the air mass flow rate This efficiency gives us an idea of heat collection by the
𝑚̇. We choose the one that uses pressure difference between blackened wall of the chimney from the solar irradiation 𝐻.
a point above and one below the top of the chimney, calculat- Using the daily solar radiation database and temperature
ed from Bernoulli’s principle. It was proposed by Alemu [1]: profile from PVGIS [8], we can represent the solutions of the
system of equations throughout a day of August:
𝑚̇ = 𝛿𝐴√2𝜌𝑟 (𝑃𝑜𝑢𝑡 − 𝑃𝑖𝑛 ) (16)

𝐿2
where 𝐴 ≡ is the area of the channel and 𝜌 the air density
100
depending on the temperature. Moreover, 𝛿 is a discharge
coefficient that adjusts the air velocity for the friction losses
along the channel:
1
−2
𝜌𝑟 𝐿
𝛿 = [1 + + 𝑓] (17)
𝜌𝑓𝑜 𝐷𝐻

an expression extracted from Syrios [10]. The term 𝑓 is the

Darcy-Weisbach friction factor that depends on the air mass
flow rate itself, as it is showed in the appendix. The equation
is implicit, and then, it will be solved by the secant method.
In a real case, the wind velocity can be 𝑉 > 1 𝑚/𝑠, and
𝑚̇
due to Bernoulli’s principle, 𝑣𝑎𝑖𝑟 = would take off. This
𝜌𝑓 𝐴 FIG. 5: The daily distribution of glass, air and wall temperatures for
fact is evidenced in the following figure: built-in chimney as well as on the roof.

FIG. 4: Air channel velocity and mass flow rate depending on wind FIG. 6: The insulator temperature and the instantaneous efficiency
velocity. depending on the position of the chimney.

If not stated otherwise, the physical conditions are always Greater efficiency means greater ventilation, which
𝑊
𝐿 = 3 𝑚, 𝐻 = 428 2 , 𝑇𝑎 = 25,8 °𝐶 and 𝑇𝑟 = 31,8 °𝐶. drastically reduces the thermal stress of the animal:
𝑚

D. Resolution and results

After all, the thermal network is a system of nonlinear
equations. For solving it, it will be used a modified Newton-
Kantorowich iterative method using a FORTRAN program-
ming. Then, in each iteration, 𝑚̇ must be computed because it
depends not only on wind velocity but also on unknown air
temperature.
FIG. 7: The animal health and welfare get worse with temperature.

Final Degree Thesis 3 Barcelona, June 2019

 Thereby, the instantaneous efficiency has also interesting IV. APPENDIX
behaviours in dependence on structural parameters of the
The different terms that have been appearing throughout
chimney itself that have to be studied:
the text are:

A. Characteristic coefficients
The following coefficients of the different parts of the
chimney are extracted from Duffie [2] and Garg [3].

Glazing (L1):

Coefficient Meaning Value

𝛼 absorbance 0,05
𝜏 transmittance 0,93
𝜀 emissivity 0,10
𝑒 roughness [𝜇𝑚] 1,50

TABLE 3: Characteristic coefficients of L1.

Wall (L2):
FIG. 8: The length is a factor to take into account regardless of the
position of the chimney. Coefficient Meaning Value
𝛼 absorbance 0,90
𝜀 emissivity 0,95
𝑒 roughness [𝜇𝑚] 90,00

TABLE 4: Characteristic coefficients of L2.

Moreover, the emissivity of the enclosure wall (L5) is

𝜀5 = 0,05.
𝑚2 𝐾
By last, the different thermal resistances [ ] of the heat
𝑊
exchangers by conduction are:

Coefficient Value
𝑅2 1,43 · 10−5
𝑅3 0,07
𝑅4 2,00
𝑅5 2,17
FIG. 9: The efficiency varies in relation to the tilt of the chimney on 𝑅𝑟 0,13
the roof according to the length.
TABLE 5: Different thermal resistances for each energy transferor
by conduction.
III. CONCLUSIONS
B. Physical properties
• With other methods of computing 𝑚̇, this remains almost
constant whereas 𝑉 increases. Then, the Alemu’s method The different physical properties of the air channel, such
represents the most realistic scenario. as the density 𝜌, the thermal conductivity 𝑘, the specific heat
• At daytime, the wall temperature is clearly the highest, 𝑐 and the dynamic and cinematic viscosity 𝜇 and 𝜈 respec-
but without irradiation, at night-time, the temperature of tively, depend on the temperature. Therefore, several value
the glazing is higher. tables have been used to build an interpolator polynomial for
• The insulator temperature is the only that depends on the each property that varies linearly with air temperature. These
position of the chimney; if the latter is built-in, this tem- tables are extracted from Çengel [11]. The nomenclature is
perature and the instantaneous efficiency are higher than
if the chimney is on the roof. 𝜌(𝑇𝑖 ) ≡ 𝜌𝑖
• The air channel velocity increases with the length of the
chimney, but surprisingly the efficiency decreases. C. Nusselt number
• For normal lengths, the optimal slope of a solar chimney The Nusselt number can be computed with the Churchill
on the roof is between 40° and 55° with respect to the and Chu correlation:
horizontal plane. However, if it is built-in the maximum
efficiency can be achieved with a length as short as pos-
sible.

Final Degree Thesis 4 Barcelona, June 2019

 1
0,67[𝑅𝑎 sin(𝜑)]4 E. Temperature correlations
𝑅𝑎 𝑁𝑢 = 0,68 + 4
9 (19) The sky is assumed to be a black body. Then, Swinbank
< 109 0,492 16
9
[9] proposes the following equivalent temperature:
[1 + ( ) ]
𝑃𝑟
3
1 𝑇𝑠 = 0,0552𝑇𝑎 2 (24)
0,387[𝑅𝑎 sin(𝜑)] 6
𝑅𝑎 𝑁𝑢 = 0,825 + 8 Moreover, the outlet temperature at the top of the chim-
9 27 (20)
≥ 109 0,492 16 ney is proposed by Hirunlabh [4] by means of this experi-
[1 + ( ) ]
𝑃𝑟 mental correlation:

where the Prandtl and Rayleigh numbers are, respectively: 𝑇𝑓 = 𝛾𝑇𝑓𝑜 + (1 − 𝛾)𝑇𝑟 (25)
with 𝛾 = 0,75.
𝑐𝑓 𝜇𝑓
𝑃𝑟 = (21)
𝑘𝑓 F. Darcy-Weisbach friction factor
Ong proved that for 𝐿 ≤ 0,8 𝑚 the natural convection in a
𝑔𝐷𝐻3 (𝑇𝑖 − 𝑇𝑓 ) solar chimney is developed by a laminar flow. Therefore, for
𝑅𝑎 = 𝑃𝑟 · 2 (22)
𝜈𝑓 𝑇𝑓 higher lengths the Alemu’s method must be considered in a
rough-pipe turbulent air regime. Its friction factor is given by
with 𝑔 = 9,81 𝑚/𝑠 2 the acceleration of gravity and 𝑇𝑖 the the Swamee-Jain equation:
temperature of the glazing or the wall, depending on where
the convection exchange occurs. 1 𝑒1 + 𝑒2 5,74 −2
𝑓= [log ( + 0,9 )] (26)
4 7,4𝐷𝐻 𝑅𝑒
D. Hydraulic diameter
𝑚̇𝐷𝐻
Considering a square chimney gap, the width and the depth of where 𝑅𝑒 = is the Reynolds number.
𝐿 𝐴𝜇𝑓
the channel are 𝑤 = 𝑑 ≡ , respectively. Then, the hydraulic
10
diameter, by definition, is given by: Acknowledgments

2𝑤𝑑 𝐿 The author gratefully acknowledges the support from

𝐷𝐻 ≡ = (23)
Jordi Andreu and is indebted to Joan del Sol and Carles Farré
𝑤 + 𝑑 10
for their invaluable help to make this project possible.
_______________________________________________________________

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Final Degree Thesis 5 Barcelona, June 2019