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PARAMETERS FOR DESIGN DEVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT OF SOLAR UPDRAFT TOWER PLANTS ON A SMALL SCALE

Authors:

Rituraj Singh1, Akhilesh Pati Tiwari2

1Rituraj Singh, Author FCEM College

2Akhilesh Pati Tiwari, Assistant Professor FCEM College

Abstract - Energy consumption has been increasing day by day because of population growth throughout the world. Present energy resources such as petroleum products may not sustain for long to meet human needs. The rapid utilization of limited fossil fuel reserves and other conventional energy sources are the main reasons for fuel scarcity in the globe. Use of fossil fuel and natural gas creates pollution, environmental problems etc. Also, their rising prices, diminishing availability in the future, force the society to find an alternate solution for fossil fuel. This has created awareness about alternative sources and therefore, much research is needed on non conventional energy sources. Solar energy is one source which is freely and abundantly available and a huge amount of energy can be harnessed. One of the solar energy based plants is called solar updraft tower (SUT) power plant which has attracted attention of researchers because of its simple construction and novel technique.

Various kinds of solar power generating technologies such as thermo electric power generation, thermionic power generation, solar central power tower technology, parabolic trough solar thermal technology and dish solar thermal technology have been developed since so many years. However, this power generating technologies have some specific demerits such as high investment cost, low installed capacity and poor ability to resist wind force. To solve the problems of above said, SUT is one of the choices among the various solar technologies for producing power because of its simple design, easy fabrication, low operational and maintenance cost. Estimation of solar input parameters such as radiation falls on collector, energy losses, radiation absorbed by absorber plate and consequently its heat losses is a very important thing in the design of a SUT system