CFD Analysis of Microchannel Heat Sink Cooling System for High Concentration Photovoltaic Systems
Jorge Andrés Arroyave Ortegón1; João Pedro Cassiano1; Elaine Maria Cardoso1; João Batista Campos Silva1
1 São Paulo State University (UNESP), School of Engineering, Dept. of Mech. Engineering, Ilha Solteira
doi:10.20906/CPS/CILAMCE2017-0943
Resumo
Solar energy could be used as a thermal energy source using solar collectors or as an electric energy source using photovoltaic cell systems. However, photovoltaic cells have some limitations regard higher temperatures and non-homogeneous temperature distributions carrying these systems to shortening its useful life and also decreasing its electrical efficiency, all this added to the costs of the photovoltaic cell materials. These limitations have been the focus of researchers in this field trying to improve the electrical efficiencies, operation temperatures and reducing the materials needed. Thus, this work aims to analyze the performance of a heat sink based on parallel microchannels for cooling a HCPV (high concentration photovoltaic) cell through a theoretical, numerical (using commercial CFD software Ansys FLUENT V15) and experimental analysis. In this work, it was considered the worst case scenario (no electricity generation), the maximum radiation peak and the average radiation according to the weather reports obtained by the UNESP - CANAL CLIMA located at São Paulo State northwest region. The focus of the model is thermal analysis, so optical efficiency on concentrators and electrical analyses are defined as input data. It is found that the use of microchannel heat sinks can improve the efficiency of a HCPV cell by introducing an effective thermal management. The temperature rise across the microchannel is estimated as10K for a commercial HCPV cell with an effective area of 100 mm2, and the pressure drop is estimated as 940 Pa for a mass flux of 330 kg/m2s.
Palavras-chave: Solar energy ; HCPV systems; , Micro-channel heat sink