Application of highly concentrated sunlight transmission and daylighting indoor via plastic optical fibers with comprehensive cooling approaches

Jifeng Song, Zhaoxuan Wu, Juntao Wang, Kexin Zhang, Kai Wang, Kunhao Liu, Liqiang Duan and Hongjuan Hou

Renewable Energy, 2021, vol. 180, issue C, 1391-1404

Abstract: Sunlight Concentrated and transmission for daylighting via optical fibers is a booming technology of direct utilization of solar energy. It uses optical fibers to introduce sunlight deep into building interior. In this work, a sunlight concentrating and transmitting system via plastic optical fibers was developed and tested. This study addressed the cooling problem of the plastic optical fibers under highly irradiation. Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) plastic fibers have a strong absorption effect on infrared light, which means that plastic fibers heat up so much when they transmit focused sunlight that they burn. In this study, a comprehensive cooling approach was developed to solve the overheating problem of plastic optical fibers, which consists of an infrared filter, cooling water and a homogenizer. The transmission efficiency of the system was measured to be about 15%. Experiments show that the comprehensive cooling measures developed can ensure that PMMA plastic optical fibers are in a safe temperature range. This shows that it is feasible to use low-cost plastic optical fibers instead of expensive silica fiber to transmit high flux for daylighting.

Keywords: Daylighting; Plastic optical fibers; Overheating; Solar concentrating (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148121012805
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:180:y:2021:i:c:p:1391-1404

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2021.08.112

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().