TY - GEN
T1 - Design of a microscale organic rankine cycle for high-concentration photovoltaics waste thermal power generation
AU - Zhang, Tie Jun
AU - Wang, Evelyn N.
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - High-concentration photovoltaics (HCPV) is a highly promising technology to directly convert plentiful solar energy to electricity. However, even for the most advanced HCPVs, about 60% of the concentrated solar energy is rejected as waste heat; therefore, it is desirable to utilize the massive waste heat from HCPV modules. Considering the nature of low-grade waste thermal energy, a microscale organic Rankine cycle (MORC) offers a promising solution. In a subcritical MORC, subcooled refrigerant is usually pumped into a microchannel heat sink of each multi-junction photovoltaic cell. In this paper, a complete microchannel flow boiling model is developed based on distributed mass, energy and momentum conservation laws. Detailed MORC thermal-fluid analysis is conducted to evaluate the effects of working fluid, inlet subcooling, axial fluid/cell temperature distribution and critical heat flux on cogeneration efficiency. The performance analysis indicates that the HCPV/MORC system can achieve a net 8.8% increase of power generation efficiency in comparison to liquid-cooled HCPV at ambient temperature. The proposed HCPV/MORC configuration shows great promise in large-scale applications of HCPV solar power generation.
AB - High-concentration photovoltaics (HCPV) is a highly promising technology to directly convert plentiful solar energy to electricity. However, even for the most advanced HCPVs, about 60% of the concentrated solar energy is rejected as waste heat; therefore, it is desirable to utilize the massive waste heat from HCPV modules. Considering the nature of low-grade waste thermal energy, a microscale organic Rankine cycle (MORC) offers a promising solution. In a subcritical MORC, subcooled refrigerant is usually pumped into a microchannel heat sink of each multi-junction photovoltaic cell. In this paper, a complete microchannel flow boiling model is developed based on distributed mass, energy and momentum conservation laws. Detailed MORC thermal-fluid analysis is conducted to evaluate the effects of working fluid, inlet subcooling, axial fluid/cell temperature distribution and critical heat flux on cogeneration efficiency. The performance analysis indicates that the HCPV/MORC system can achieve a net 8.8% increase of power generation efficiency in comparison to liquid-cooled HCPV at ambient temperature. The proposed HCPV/MORC configuration shows great promise in large-scale applications of HCPV solar power generation.
KW - Concentrating photovoltaics
KW - microchannel cooling
KW - organic Rankine cycle
KW - thermal management
KW - waste heat utilization
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84866175792
U2 - 10.1109/ITHERM.2012.6231534
DO - 10.1109/ITHERM.2012.6231534
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84866175792
SN - 9781424495320
T3 - InterSociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems, ITHERM
SP - 993
EP - 1002
BT - Proceedings of the 13th InterSociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems, ITherm 2012
T2 - 13th InterSociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems, ITherm 2012
Y2 - 30 May 2012 through 1 June 2012
ER -
