An innovative twin-technology solar system design for electricity production

Abstract

Traditional solar updraft power plants work during the daytime as it is dependent on solar radiation to generate electricity. Hence, energy productivity, efficiency, and performance are limited. This work presents a novel attempt to increase the productivity of a traditional solar updraft system by combining it with a downdraft technology in one system, the Twin-Technology Solar System (TTSS). The TTSS comprises two co-centric inner and external solar towers, turbines, water sprinklers, and a collector. The inner tower works as a traditional solar updraft system, where the air is heated under the collector due to irradiance and then moved up the chimney due to the pressure column. While the external tower creates a downdraft wind by spraying water at the hot ambient air at the top of the tower. The hot air instantly absorbs the water and descends the tower to interact with the turbines at the bottom to produce electricity. This mode is independent of solar irradiance and can operate day and night. Hence, the TTSS generates electricity, daytime and night. A mathematical simulation model was developed based on the proposed system's energy and mass balance equations to assess performance. The TTSS generated 752,763 kWh of electricity annually, 2.14 folds higher than a traditional solar updraft system. Consequently, a reduction of 677 tons of CO2 was achieved with production. The design is suitable for deployment in hot and dry weather areas, such as remote villages and deserts. Future work will investigate introducing other technologies to boost the TTSS performance.