Design and manufacturing of turbine for a micro solar chimney power plant; Performing of experiments

Solar energy is one of the most applied renewable energy sources. Solar chimneys are one of the new systems used for the production of electricity with solar energy. Solar chimneys consists of three main elements: collector, chimney and turbine. Electrical energy is generated by rotating a turbine placed at the inlet of the chimney by heating and rising of air with the effect of solar radiation, and the vacuum effect of chimney. In this study, a sloped solar chimney system with 10 m chimney height and 6,4 m collector diameter was used as an experimental set. Collector input and output air temperature, outdoor temperature, chimney inlet and outlet air flow rate, outdoor wind speed, pressure difference within the chimney, turbine speed and solar radiation values were measured at 10 second time interval with the sensors installed on the solar chimney system. The turbine blades are made with 3 different blade profiles. A total of 15 blades were manufactured by using aluminum casting method for the solar chimney turbine with 5 blades. The turbine manufactured according to the chimney diameter was installed at inlet of chimney. Blades was manufactured using NACA0015, NACA2415, NACA4415 blade profiles and they have been tested with 3 different pitch angle As a result of the study, it was observed that the solar radiation and collector outlet temperature had direct effect on inlet air flow rate. It was found that the turbine rotation speed was increased with the increase in hunchback ratio and decrease in the pitch angle, for this type profiles.. It was concluded that the NACA4415 profile was the most efficient model at 40 ° pitch angle.