A Solar Chimney for Natural Ventilation of a Three-Story Building

Energy consumption of buildings can be significantly reduced with appropriate design for natural ventilation, particularly based on solar energy. Solar heat gained on the building envelope can be converted into thermal effects to induce air flow for natural ventilation or cooling of the building interior and the building envelope. For the ventilation application, the solar chimney should provide sufficient air flow rate. In this study, we investigated a solar chimney for ventilation of a three – story building. The chimney was assumed to be integrated into the building envelope and connected to all three stories of the building. To predict the air flow rate induced by the chimney through each story, a computational model was built based on the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method. By changing the design parameters (location and dimensions) of the chimney, ventilation rate through each story was computed. Temperature distribution in the chimney and the thermal efficiency of the chimney were also obtained for different design scenarios. From the results, the optimal design of the chimney which can provide nearly equal ventilation rate for all three stories was found. This study can serve as a demonstration for applications of the CFD technique in design of sustainable buildings.