Metal Foam Absorber in Solar Chimney

In this paper, Numerical investigation of the influence of inserting the metal foam to the solar chimney to induce natural ventilation in the test room is analyzed in this work. Two types of solar chimneys which without insertion of metal foam absorber and with insertion of metal foam absorber are designed with dimensions of length× width× air gap (2 m× 1 m×0.3 m) and size of the test room (1.5 m× 1.5 m×1 m). Four incline angles are tested (30o,45o ,60o ,90o) for each chimney and two length of tower inlet (30 cm, 40 cm) . ANSYS FLUENT program (version 14.5) used to simulate this model and solve the governing equations by finite volume technique. The results showed that the air flow velocity at the outlet of ventilation solar chimney increases of the model with copper foam absorber about 33% from the model without copper foam absorber at constant inclination angle, therefore this gives indication of the important of insertion the copper foam as an absorber media in the ventilation solar chimney.