Numerical study for enhancement of concentrator photovoltaic (CPV)‎ cells efficiency

Abstract EN

A study of thermal characteristics for uncooled CPV in addition to fluid flow andthermal characteristics for CPV integrated with a three dimensional (3D)rectangular shaped microchannel heat sink (MCHS) is numerically investigated.

Steady and laminar flow of water as a coolant is used in the present study.

Themodel is validated using different sets of data in the literature.

For the cooled CPVsystem, the flow and thermal fields are analyzed using various channel number(N=26, 52, 78 and 104), concentration ratio (CR) ranged from 1 to 20 and massflowrate ranged from 200 to 2000 g/min.

For the uncooled CPV system, the CRranged from 1 to 2.5.

The parameters such as solar cell temperature, temperatureuniformity, electrical efficiency, electrical power, net gained power, thermal powerand thermal efficiency are evaluated from the simulation.

Based on the obtainedresults, for the uncooled system, the CR of 2.5 is the maximum value that can beused where the solar cell temperature reached to the maximum allowabletemperature of 85.48 ℃.

For the cooled system, the results show that at CR of 20and mass flowrate of 200 g/min, increasing the channel number from 26 to 104, significantly decrease the solar cell temperature from 93.2 ℃ to 87.3 ℃.

As theconcentration ratio increases, the cell efficiency decreases due to the increase in thecell temperature while the electrical power increases.

Increasing the mass flowrateprovides a remarkable enhancement in the thermal efficiency.

For instance, at CRequals 20 and N of 26, increasing the mass flow rate from 200 g/min to 2000 g/minincreases the thermal efficiency from 43% to 71.7% .