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Thermal analysis of a multi-layer microchannel heat sink for cooling concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) cells

Siyabi, Idris Al; Shanks, Katie; Mallick, Tapas; Sundaram, Senthilarasu

Authors

Idris Al Siyabi

Katie Shanks

Tapas Mallick



Abstract

Concentrator Photovoltaic (CPV) technology is increasingly being considered as an alternative option for solar electricity generation. However, increasing the light concentration ratio could decrease the system output power due to the increase in the temperature of the cells. The performance of a multi-layer microchannel heat sink configuration was evaluated using numerical analysis. In this analysis, three dimensional incompressible laminar steady flow model was solved numerically. An electrical and thermal solar cell model was coupled for solar cell temperature and efficiency calculations. Thermal resistance, solar cell temperature and pumping power were used for the system efficiency evaluation. An increase in the number of microchannel layers exhibited the best overall performance in terms of the thermal resistance, solar cell temperature uniformity and pressure drop. The channel height and width has no effect on the solar cell maximum temperature. However, increasing channel height leads to a reduction in the pressure drop and hence less fluid pumping power.

Citation

Siyabi, I. A., Shanks, K., Mallick, T., & Sundaram, S. (2017). Thermal analysis of a multi-layer microchannel heat sink for cooling concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) cells. In AIP Conference Proceedings (070001). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5001434

Conference Name 13TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CONCENTRATOR PHOTOVOLTAIC SYSTEMS (CPV-13)
Conference Location Ottawa, Canada
Start Date May 1, 2017
End Date May 3, 2017
Online Publication Date Sep 6, 2017
Publication Date 2017
Deposit Date Mar 10, 2023
Publisher AIP Publishing
Volume 1881
Pages 070001
Book Title AIP Conference Proceedings
ISBN 978-0-7354-1561-4
DOI https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5001434