Optical-thermal-electrical investigation of solar CPV-T system embedded with microchannel heat sinks.
Date7th Mar 2024
Time03:00 PM
Venue Through Google Meet Link: https://meet.google.com/vjb-euwy-ieh
PAST EVENT
Details
Concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) is a well-established renewable energy technology. A
significant challenge in CPV systems is their low efficiency, majorly due to localized heating
yielded from concentration, often requiring the use of cooling systems. The accurate
performance analysis and cooling system design for CPV systems requires a multi-physics
model. In the present work, an integrated optical-thermal-electrical model has been proposed
for the performance evaluation of CPV systems incorporated with different configurations of
microchannel heat sinks. The heat sink configuration includes 116 parallel and counter
microchannels (Configuration A and B), single wide microchannel (Configuration C), and
single wide minichannel (Configuration D) heat sinks. This study involves 3D Monte-Carlo
ray tracing, finite volume method, and cell-based electrical modeling. The results indicated
that the flux profile over the absorber is highly non-uniform in nature. Furthermore, the CPV
system with a Configuration C heat sink achieves a better uniformity in temperature,
providing an optimized thermal performance of 64.63%. Moreover, the integrated model
considers the impact of PV cell current mismatch that becomes prominent at increasing
incidence angles. A maximum deviation of 6.9% in electrical power is obtained while
comparing predicted numerical results against experimental results available in literature.
Speakers
Mr. Harsh Chaurasia, ME21S003
Department of Mechanical Engineering