Theoretical investigation of height and width tapered microchannel cooling systems for ultra-high concentrator photovoltaic thermal hybrids

William J. Cameron, Katie Shanks, Tapas K. Mallick and K. Srinivas Reddy

Renewable Energy, 2024, vol. 234, issue C

Abstract: This paper explores the utilisation of horizontally and vertically converging microchannel heat sinks for cooling concentrator photovoltaic systems. These are compared to a straight microchannel, which is used as the control test. The primary performance parameters considered are the system's energy and exergetic efficiency and the thermal stresses generated in the solar cell. Horizontally converging channels yield more uniform temperature distributions, but the peak and average thermal stress generation increased due to the higher cell temperature. Conversely, vertically converging channels demonstrated a reduction in thermal stress generation. However, channels which converge more sharply require a substantial increase in pumping power for the same cooling-fluid flow rate which negatively impacts energy and exergetic efficiency. Notably, the control design for straight microchannels is specified to have the same manufacture difficulty across configurations, which is an often-overlooked aspect.

Keywords: High concentrator photovoltaic; Heat sink; Multi-junction solar cell; Exergy efficiency; Photovoltaic thermal hybrid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014812401276X
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:234:y:2024:i:c:s096014812401276x

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2024.121208

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 ().