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Would a Tesla Turbine work in a solar updraft tower? Answered

I was playing around with making a small scale solar updraft tower and I was curious if I could use a tesla turbine instead of a turbine with blades. Would the Chimney effect be enough to drive a tesla turbine?

Tags:teslaturbinesolarupdrafttowerheatconvectionhotairengine

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FoolishSage
FoolishSage

8 years ago

I am not very familiar with Tesla turbines but a solar updraft tower will generally provide a significant volume of low speed air. If I understand the tesla concept correctly it benefits from high speed and high viscosity, neither of which a solar updraft tower would provide. I dont want to stifle your inventive creativity so I suggest you try it :)

By the way, a solar updraft tower combines the Chimney effect with the Green house effect. It also suffers greatly from the square cube law so a small scale should work substantially worse than a larger scale.

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thecoonskin
thecoonskin

Reply 8 years ago

thanks for the info. Do you think I'd generate more power utilizing something like charcoal as the heat source and still using the chimney effect?

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FoolishSage
FoolishSage

Reply 8 years ago

I suppose any source of heat can replace the greenhouse part of the solar updraft tower but if you are burning coal anyhow there are better ways to generate power and I dont think you can call it "solar" any more :p

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thecoonskin
thecoonskin

Reply 8 years ago

yea it just becomes an updraft tower at that point. Well I'll give it a try and see what happens.

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FoolishSage
FoolishSage

Reply 8 years ago

Let me know how it turns out. There isn't too much practical info about updraft towers (solar or otherwise) so please share what you find!