Solar Vortex Engine

The solar chimney power plant SCPP has been proven to be a promising technology for solar power generation. However the tall chimney has drawbacks in terms of construction and investment cost. Another technique of atmospheric vortex engine AVE was presented to generate electricity which utilizes heat exchangers as a heat source. Nevertheless thermal-hydrodynamic behavior of AVE has not been modeled or analyzed mathematically or experimentally yet. The developed solar vortex engine SVE has been proposed to eliminate the chimney unit in SCPP and the heat exchangers in AVE by a new design for vortex generation with utilizing the solar energy as thermal energy source. This book therefore provides a new technique for hot updraft supplemental to spin the wind turbine and generate electricity. Three investigation techniques were carried out to evaluate the performance of the developed SVE by assessing thermal-hydrodynamic behavior. Mathematical modeling and numerical simulation are validated by experimental measurements. In conclusion the SVE is feasible and promising for electrical power generation.