Introducing the Pottery Solar Systems: Passive and Active solar systems; case study & CFD simulation

The Pottery Thermal Storage is the combination of thermal storage and evaporative cooling. Evaporative cooling enhances the thermal exchange performance of thermal storage and adds ventilation and humidification. The Paper introduces four types of Pottery Thermal Storage Systems as follows; Passive Pottery Water Wall, Active Pottery Water Wall, Passive Pottery Solar Chimney and Active Pottery Solar Chimney. First The Pottery Water Wall, which is an enhancement to the water wall, as it adds evaporative cooling. The pottery water wall is a typical water wall with an opening containing porous ceramic piping for evaporative cooling. The porous ceramic pipes exchange the stored energy with the incoming air cooling or heating it, while humidifying it as well. Anwar & Aripin (2015) conducted a simulation on the Pottery Water Wall using CFD simulation. The Passive Pottery Water Wall achieved cooling ability ranging from 4 to 10C° and heating ability of 4 to 15C°. Second, the Active Pottery Water Wall is a water wall with porous ceramic pipes going through in a loop maximizing the surface area of heat exchange, the porous ceramic pipes are connected to the building via an active mean –fan- to cool, heat, humidify and ventilate the building. Third, Pottery Passive Solar Chimney uses the difference in pressure to ventilate a building while using a thermal storage medium with porous ceramic for evaporative cooling. Air is driven through the building using the solar chimney to get in contact with water stored in the building; thus, heat is exchanged via evaporation. The cool air is then distributed via the solar chimney. The author along with Geo consultants have implemented the Pottery Solar Chimney in the design of a proposal of a Zero Energy Building proposed in Dubai, UAE. The Proposed System is used to ventilate the basement of the building. It consists of a greenhouse established at the far end of the basement and a downdraught evaporative cooling tower that is set up at the other end of the building. Air is driven across the basement via the solar chimney effect –from the DECT to the Green House the air passing through the DECT is cooled and humidified using porous ceramic containers filled with water. The use of this strategy reduced the ventilation and cooling power consumption of the basement by 300KW. Finally, Active Pottery Solar Chimney is a solar chimney with a loop of porous ceramic piping connected to a tank of water –thermal storage medium- in the basement. The author along with Geo consultants have implemented the Pottery Solar Chimney in the design of a proposal of a Zero Energy Building proposed in Dubai, UAE. They have set up solar chimneys along the double skinned façade of the building. Water is driven from an underground aquifer, through porous ceramic pipes, causing the evaporative cooling in turn to reduce the temperature in the air gap of the double skinned façade of the building from 45C° to 30C°, and this reduced the cooling load of the building by 300KW.