Performance Evaluation of Solar Vortex Updraft Air Generator under the Effect of Various Vanes Angles Operation Conditions

Abstract

Several researchers tended to study and develop vortex technologies to generate clean electric power, it generates a vortex updraft air stream while operating at a moderate temperature scale. The conventional solar air collector with a vortex engine has been shown to be insufficient for starting and maintaining updrafts by a previous model. So, this research sought to propose and design a new solar vortex engine system and improve the system by conducting a set of calculations carried out by the ANSYS 2020 R2 simulation program. The research focuses on increasing the performance of the proposed model by changing the angle of the Guide Vane to increase the vortex force generated where four angles are proposed. Where four different angles were proposed that are close to the angles of previous studies (10°, 15°, 20°, and 25°). The air intake speed has been changed on each proposed angle. The proposed model was validated by its general behavior, which is similar to previous studies in performance. After a comparison was made between the results of the proposed models, it was found that the angle of 20 deg gives the highest performance of the model that was designed and tested using the ANSYS program.