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The purpose of this paper is to study a solar thermal system. Solar chimney power plants (SCPPs) produce electrical energy and thermal heat from solar radiation. The thermal study of SCPPs is required, as these solar systems are characterized by high costs.

This study presents a numerical study of unsteady airflow characteristics inside an SCPP. In fact, the generated power of the SCPP depends on environmental conditions. To validate this study, a solar prototype is built in the National School of Engineers of Sfax, University of Sfax, Tunisia, North Africa. The system is mainly composed by a collector, an absorber, a chimney and a turbine. The collector diameter is 2750 mm, the collector roof height is 50 mm, the chimney height is 3,000 mm and the turbine diameter is 150 mm.

The local characteristics of the air flow are presented and analyzed, such as the distribution of the temperature, the magnitude velocity and the total pressure. Analysis confirms that ambient air temperature and solar radiation are important environmental variables for the improvement of solar chimney efficiency.

Although much work has been done to date, it has been noted that the most published works have presented the profiles of air velocity and air temperature in a specific position within the solar setup. However, these profiles could sometimes be misinterpreted. In fact, some researchers did not focus on the distribution of air temperature, air velocity and pressure. These parameters are important to optimize the solar system. Indeed, the most published works deal with a larger prototype, such as the Manzanares prototype. However, it has not found connections between larger and small prototypes of SCPP.