TY - GEN
T1 - An evacuated PV/Thermal hybrid collector with the tube/XCPC design
AU - Jiang, Lun
AU - Lan, Chuanjin
AU - Kim, Yong Sin
AU - Ma, Yanbao
AU - Winston, Roland
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - The current challenge for PV/Thermal (PV/T) systems is the reduction of radiation heat loss. Compared to solar thermal selective coating, the solar cells cannot be used as an efficient thermal absorber due to their large emissivity of the encapsulation material. Many commercial PV/T products therefore require a high concentration (more than 10x) to reach an acceptable thermal efficiency for their receivers. Such a concentration system inevitably has to track or semitrack, which induces additional cost and collects only the direct radiation from the sun. We propose a new PV/T design using a vacuum encapsulated thin film cell to solve this problem. The proposed design also collects the diffuse sun light efficiently by using an external compound parabolic concentrator (XCPC). Since the transparent electrode (TCO) of thin film cell is inherently transparent in visible light and reflective beyond infrared, this design uses this layer instead of the conventional solar cell encapsulation as the outmost heat loss surface. By integrating such a vacuum design with a tube shaped absorber, we reduce the complexity of conducting the heat energy and electricity out of the device. A low concentration standalone non-tracking solar collector is proposed in this paper. We also analyzed the thermosyphon system configuration using heat transfer and ray tracing models. The economics of such a receiver are presented.
AB - The current challenge for PV/Thermal (PV/T) systems is the reduction of radiation heat loss. Compared to solar thermal selective coating, the solar cells cannot be used as an efficient thermal absorber due to their large emissivity of the encapsulation material. Many commercial PV/T products therefore require a high concentration (more than 10x) to reach an acceptable thermal efficiency for their receivers. Such a concentration system inevitably has to track or semitrack, which induces additional cost and collects only the direct radiation from the sun. We propose a new PV/T design using a vacuum encapsulated thin film cell to solve this problem. The proposed design also collects the diffuse sun light efficiently by using an external compound parabolic concentrator (XCPC). Since the transparent electrode (TCO) of thin film cell is inherently transparent in visible light and reflective beyond infrared, this design uses this layer instead of the conventional solar cell encapsulation as the outmost heat loss surface. By integrating such a vacuum design with a tube shaped absorber, we reduce the complexity of conducting the heat energy and electricity out of the device. A low concentration standalone non-tracking solar collector is proposed in this paper. We also analyzed the thermosyphon system configuration using heat transfer and ray tracing models. The economics of such a receiver are presented.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84871590942&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84871590942&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84871590942
SN - 9781622760923
T3 - World Renewable Energy Forum, WREF 2012, Including World Renewable Energy Congress XII and Colorado Renewable Energy Society (CRES) Annual Conferen
SP - 88
EP - 94
BT - World Renewable Energy Forum, WREF 2012, Including World Renewable Energy Congress XII and Colorado Renewable Energy Society (CRES) Annual Conference
T2 - World Renewable Energy Forum, WREF 2012, Including World Renewable Energy Congress XII and Colorado Renewable Energy Society (CRES) Annual Conference
Y2 - 13 May 2012 through 17 May 2012
ER -