Experimental investigation of solar chimney with phase change material (PCM)

The effect of latent heat storage (LHS) on a solar chimney pilot was studied experimentally. Two kinds of experiments including with and without phase change material (PCM) were carried out, and the parameters including temperature and velocity were measured to investigate the solar chimney (SC) performance. Paraffin wax was used as a PCM in the constructed SC with 3 m chimney height and 3 m collector diameter in the campus of University of Tehran. The results show that the maximum absorber surface temperature for the SC with PCM and the conventional solar chimney (CSC) are 72 °C and 69 °C, respectively. Also, the maximum air velocity for the CSC is 1.9 m/s, while it is 2 m/s for the system equipped with PCM thermal storage. So, the LHS system causes increasing the average mass flow rate of the pilot around 8.33%. As a result, using LHS system in SC leads to improve the solar chimney performance.