Abstract

Utilizing Solar Chimney Power Plants (SCPPs) for manufacturing clean and environment-friendly energy has drawn a lot of attention in recent years and has (over the passing decades) become one of the most promising solutions in the solar energy field. Low efficiency, construction difficulties and other required improvements have encouraged researchers to work on this system. Many researchers put their efforts into proposing an optimized configuration for the main components, whereas others have proposed innovative ideas and add-on accessories to improve solar chimney power plants from an efficiency or construction viewpoint. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the past few decades and includes analyses of the theoretical, experimental and numerical studies conducted focused on optimizing the main characters of the system, such as the chimney, collector and Power Conversion Unit (PCU) together with other recently suggested innovative ideas and alternative technologies to improve solar chimney power plants efficiency. Concurrently, other researchers focused on hybrid solar chimney power plants to produce the desired by-product such as distilled water and so make SCPPs more practical.