Coal Exhaust Making a Solar Updraft Tower Work

[John d Marano]

I was thinking of ways of making carbon cleaner for the environment. One of the ways I came up with is filling a solar updraft tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower with the exhaust from a gas/coal plant.

So you'd get a true greenhouse gas accumulation of heat going in the tower which will allow for a much smaller/realistic footprint/collector section of the tower. My concern, however, is that it will get very hot in the tower plus light from the sun and plus time will result in very toxic smog?!

It's been on my mind so let me know . . .

 

[russ_watters]

I think adding a heat and additional gas source of any kind will increase energy available to be captured. the question is whether it will increase the energy available enough to matter.

 

[anorlunda]

One of the ways I came up with is filling a solar updraft tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower with the exhaust from a gas/coal plant.

You can estimate the energy available by assuming that you capture 100% of the thermal energy in the exhaust. That is proportional to the flow rate of gas times the temperature difference between the gas and ambient temperature at the top of the tower times the specific heat. In reality, it might be hard to capture more than 30% of that energy.

If you like to promote this idea, then you should do the research. Look up the numbers (via a little Internet searching) and do the calculation yourself. Then post here again with the result.