Effect of diffuser proximity to buildings on wind energy potential

Due to their promising augmentations of wind flows in a manner combating wind intermittency and turbulence, diffusers integration within the built environment is highly demanded. This paper investigated the effect of diffuser integration to a side of generic tall building. It examined diffuser’s resulting velocities when varying diffuser’s proximity to buildings. This proximity of diffusers provides one of the key factors affecting diffusers’ performance within the Built environment. A generic diffuser is formed of an aerofoil profile following the NACA 1244 aerofoil. The diffuser is then subjected to an array of proximities to a generic tall building section ranging from 20cm-110cm. In addition to a range of velocities ranging from 1-16m/s. The paper concluded that optimum diffuser proximity to building is at 90cm from the building, which produced a resulting velocity of 29.8m/s with an increase of 86.6% over the resulting velocity in the same diffuser but as a stand-alone scenario. The study employed ANSYS FLUENT educational R1 CFD to model diffusers without incorporation of a turbine.