Talk:Solar chimney

Cooltower article The following ref is helpful: Moody, C. D., T. L. Thompson, and J. F. Peck. 1978. The Downdraft Chimney: Passive Evaporative Cooling for the Southwest. Tucson, AZ: Environmental Research Laboratory, University of Arizona. 140.215.156.57 (talk) 16:36, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Important to check out
I think that there is a danger to introduce Radon in the building when you are sucking air though an underground pipe, because it can always crack without knowing. I would only use geothermic air cooling if it was under pressure (pushing air from the entry instead of sucking it out from the exit). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jim777 (talk • contribs) 19:44, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

History
We should include that fact that Romans used this to cool their homes. A black chimney and a long underground trough to pull cooled air through.

It's 2000+ yrs old. Source?

Merge Proposal
There is a lot of overlap between Solar chimney and Solar Tower. Both focus on the yet-to-be realized EnviroMission project in Australia. I don't think we need two articles on that subject. So I propose to move all the Schlaich, Bergerman and Partner, EnviroMission and SolarMission Technologies Inc. stuff as there is in Solar chimney, and merge that into Solar Tower. That way Solar chimney can focus on what it really is supposed to be, and what has now been marginalized: An approach to passive cooling of buildings that has been used for thousands of years, see http://www.sxlist.com/techref/other/spac.htm, http://www.seav.sustainability.vic.gov.au/ftp/buildings/VSII/solar_chimney.pdf , http://ej.iop.org/links/q33/jEw26nxl,ER6garfk7abcQ/mst4_7_n01.pdf , http://www.ecosensual.net/drm/eco/ecovent1.html , http://www.flomerics.com/flovent/technical_papers/v46.pdf , http://www.europeangreencities.com/pdf/activities/ConfApr2004/15.pdf , http://www.greenbuilder.com/sourcebook/PassSolGuide3.html, http://www.azsolarcenter.com/design/pas-3.html , http://www.azsolarcenter.com/technology/pas-3.html, http://www.thefarm.org/charities/i4at/lib2/aircool.htm and http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy02osti/32157.pdf. When you go back to the origins of the Solar chimney article you will see that that is what it was originally about, see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Solar_chimney&oldid=6597806, until it was taken over by the EnviroMission folks JdH 14:49, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * According to the EnvrioMission website, the two things are one and the same:
 * "Formerly referred to as Solar Chimney technology in academic literature - it is now marketed without the reference to chimney (to avoid confusion with the pollution associated with chimneys - this technology is emission free)"
 * http://www.enviromission.com.au/faqs/faqs.htm#q10 131.111.243.37 15:43, 17 May 2006


 * That's EnviroMission's POV, but the facts are against it. The Solar chimney concept has been around for many years; in fact long before EnviroMission even existed. There is a clear difference between the Solar chimney concept as a small-scale, energy-efficient approach to the ventilation of a building on one hand, and the large-scale power plant proposal by EnviroMission on the other. As it stands, the original concept of what a Solar chimney is all about has pretty much been lost. What's more, we don't need two articles on one and the same subject. JdH 16:43, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * And while we are at it we might as well rename the resulting article to Solar updraft tower power plant, just to avoid all the confusion that exists about the name Solar Tower. Even Jörg Schlaich himself calls it that, see http://link.aip.org/link/?JSEEDO/127/117/1 and http://www.sbp.de/de/html/contact/download/The_Solar_Updraft.pdf, and I see no reason whatsoever to argue with that. JdH 22:08, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * All the "Solar tower" material should be in one article - no discussion needed there, as the topic is identical. I have moved that material from here to Solar Tower and put a disambig note at the top of this article.


 * I've reverted this article back to when it was primarily about the ventilation device - unfortunately I had to use a 2004 edit. If more recent edits relevant to the ventilation device have been lost, I apologise - though I had a bit of a look through the page history and couldn't see anything else. In any case, the main thing is to now improve this article.


 * I've also made a comment on the name at Talk:Solar Tower. --Singkong2005 (t - c - WPID) 05:51, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I wikified and copy edited your article
If I made any mistakes or if you have a problem with anything I did, let me know and I will try to fix it. It's a very interesting article. I added it to the Solar power page, to their list of solar resources. KarenAnn 21:30, 27 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you; looks good. I have one problem though with the sentence: "The surface area is more important than the diameter of the chimney the purpose of heating by solar radiation." I am not entirely sure how to fix that sentence "...for the purpose of..." "...for better heat exchange with the air..."; it is a bit convoluted. The idea that should come across is that a large surface area is good for heating the air inside the chimney; clearly, a large diameter round chimney would not do the job. JdH 10:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Modified sentence hopefully for the better. Please check it out. (I'm not clear about the concept being described.) Also, should it be "surfaces" instead of "surface"? KarenAnn 11:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I just checked back and saw the vast improvements to this article, done recently by JdH & KarenAnn. Good work. --Singkong2005 (t - c - WPID) 14:59, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Replacement Image:Solar_chimney.JPG
The following tag appeared on Image:Solar_chimney.JPG, that is the first image that is used in the article. I would appreciate it if someone would help out with that. JdH 15:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Your page looks great
You have vastly improved and clarify it. (Even I understand it now!) KarenAnn 01:16, 5 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you :-) You have been very helpful. There are still a lot of issues which should be addressed. One of the things which I hope somebody will address is its application in less developed countries. There is a large scientific literature out there that adresses that. One of the things I came across while looking into this is the Windcatcher, which is a related traditional Persian architectural device; very interesting. JdH 01:49, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

The wind catcher operates quite differently to a solar chimney. Efpalinos 18:00, 19 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your contribution to this article; it is very helpful. Unfortunately, the description of the function of the Windcatcher is very murky indeed; I have tried to address that under the header How does this work? of the talk page. Basically, what I believe is that the Windcatcher is in principle nothing else than a chimney. And like all chimneys (including the Solar chimney) it works by a difference in temperature: The temperature inside the chimney is higher than the temperature outside; it is this difference in temperature that causes a pressure difference, and hence an updraft inside the chimney. The Solar chimney seeks to enhance that natural ventilation process by using solar power to further increase the temperature inside the chimney. Clearly, the Windcatcher does not do that, it uses the pre-existing temperature differences instead. But apart from that particular aspect everything else remains the same. Climate plays a role as well; from the discussion on the Talk page it became clear that in the high desert of central Iran the outside temperature falls significantly during the night; so during the night the Windcatcher will help to draw cool outside air into the building. In the end, the Windcatcher is a device to improve ventilation, taking advantage of the local climatological circumstances. JdH 05:27, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Copy edit needed
This needs some copy editing... This explination is somewhat flawed ...cold air is heavier than hot air, hot air does not draw up cold air, it floats on top of cold air , cold air displaces hot air pushing the hot air up until buoancy is reached. Convection does not take place in the abscence of graviy. How would the cold air rise out of the channel in the ground when the coldest air would fall to the lowest point in the system ... this is all basic year 10 physics. Just because many architects do not understand this principle and draw a lines representing convection in a schematic section of a passive ventilation system doesn't mean that it works. Hot air does not draw up cold air cold air displaces hot air gravity is causing everything to fall the heavier things fall below the lighter things. If you let a ping pong ball go under water it floats to the surface because the water being denser and heavier displaces it until it reaches the surface at the surface it becomes bouyant it does not keep rising drawing up water behind it.If the cool below ground channel was above the room then yes the cold air would fall into the room displacing the hotter less dense air only till the buoyancy point is reached. -- Jake (talk) 03:20, 10 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Basically, like all heat engines, the thing is driven by a difference in temperature. The temperature of the air inside the chimney is higher than the temperature outside; that's all, that is what is driving it. Air expands at higher temperature; therefore the air inside the chimney is less dense than the outside air. Just consider the weight of a column of air inside the chimney with a comparable column of air outside: Because of its higher temperature, and hence lower density that column of air inside weighs less than the column outside; and that difference in weight causes a pressure difference at ground level between inside and out.
 * One more thing: please don't mess up the main text with silly remarks like this one. JdH (talk) 11:00, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Solar vs. Thermal
It seems to me that a solar chimney and a thermal chimney aren't just two names for the same thing. A thermal chimney might not be designed for solar gain, or might even be designed to avoid solar gain. In this case, it would only assist convection when the inside temperature was higher than the outside temperature, whereas a solar chimney could drive convection even if the inside temperature is cooler than outside, with sufficient solar gain in the chimney. In climates that are cool at night and hot during the day, it can be good to have more ventilation at night than during the day. A simple solar chimney does the opposite, bringing in the most outside air when it is warmest outside. Thermal mass in the chimney, combined with a damper to shut down the convection during the heat of the day, can be used to shift the solar chimney effect to the night, but with a low-solar-gain thermal chimney, you get convection at the right time automatically, passively.

Maybe there should be a separate "thermal chimney" article. Ccrrccrr (talk) 12:52, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


 * As mentioned, incoming air may pre-cooled by leading it through underground ducts before it is allowed to enter the building, in order to provide cooling even when it is hot outside. Also, the article already mentions the possibility of integrating the solar chimney with a Trombe wall; that would provide the thermal mass needed to shift ventilation to the night. In addition, you may want to cap the chimney to create a Venturi effect, to create an updraft whenever a breeze is present. Combine all this low-tech with one high-tech gadget, i.e.: a thermostat-controlled damper, and you are in business :-) JdH (talk) 17:31, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Precedent Study: The Environmental Building
This section looks more like an outline of a project plan than an encyclopedic article. "The Building Research Establishment (BRE) office building in Garston, incorporates solar assisted passive ventilation stacks as part of its ventilation strategy." What is this 'Building Research Establishment'? Where is this 'Garston'? Who is the architect mentioned here? Modallist (talk) 15:04, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

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